On Apr 11, 2005, at 6:00 AM, Olin Lathrop wrote:

> At 100 units that's a total additional cost of $1000.
>
> Now how much engineering time will it take to do the extra electronic
> design, layout, and testing?  Then add the time to integrate the TCP/IP
> stack into your application, rework the application to a cooperative 
> task
> model if necessary, and add the new application parts specific to 
> network
> communications.

I though you were being even more pessimistic than that.  Even the 
$10,000
that would be added by plunking down something like an XPORT on 100 
boards
is pretty small compared to the engineering cost of designing a product
WITHOUT any internet support.  I mean, in the US, $10k is well less than
3 months worth of engineering time, which is not nearly enough to go 
from
nothing to a shipping product...

OTOH, there are things might build 100 of that I wouldn't quite consider
a "product" at all that people still seem to make a living designing and
selling.  Joe Engineer working out of his garage on weekends might be
THRILLED to get $10k in income from something he designed.

BillW
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