Ice Storm pix

On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:07:44 -0800 (PST), Jay Honeck
wrote:

They have a Value Added Tax (VAT) which is a tad over 17% plus there
was an import duty on aircraft.

I don't know how it works out for aviation, but for electronics,
radios may run from 50 to 100% more than in the US.

You mean this neat little $399 Compaq laptop I'm happily pecking away
on would cost $800 in Martin's Austrian world?

And not just electronics. Years ago I know a young Brit who with
others would fly to the use on shopping excursions. They could fly
over, purchase their clothes, pick up as much extra as allowed and
pretty much pay for their own new clothes AND the round trip airline
ticket.

Roger


Dang, I knew my great-great-great-Grandfather Heinrich left that part
of the world for a good reason!

;-)

On 2007-12-20, Jay Honeck wrote:
You mean this neat little $399 Compaq laptop I'm happily pecking away
on would cost $800 in Martin's Austrian world?

Dunno about Austria, but in the local Tesco's (a supermarket) you can
pick up a reasonably specced PC laptop for a couple of hundred (i.e.
around $400).

Since all computer manufacture moved to the Far East, the price
difference between US and UK prices has not been all that great (mainly,
just VAT).

--
From the sunny Isle of Man.
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.

Roger (K8RI) schrieb:

They have a Value Added Tax (VAT) which is a tad over 17% plus there
was an import duty on aircraft.

who is "they"?
we (Austria) have 20% VAT (10% on some items), Germany has 19% VAT (and
9% [IIRC] on some items), and so on.

I don't know how it works out for aviation, but for electronics,
radios may run from 50 to 100% more than in the US.

aviation related you might be right, yes (due to regulation and paperwork).

Roger (K8RI)

#m
--
I am not a terrorist http://www.casualdisobedience.com/

Dylan Smith schrieb:
On 2007-12-20, Jay Honeck wrote:
You mean this neat little $399 Compaq laptop I'm happily pecking away
on would cost $800 in Martin's Austrian world?

Dunno about Austria, but in the local Tesco's (a supermarket) you can
pick up a reasonably specced PC laptop for a couple of hundred (i.e.
around $400).

a PC (midi tower) with a celeron 420 CPU, 1 gig ram, 160gig harddisc,
dvd-burner, no os: about 200,- euros without vat = 240,- euros with vat.

www.xe.net calculates 200,- euros to 287,- us-dollars.

due to the current exchange rate this and all other things from euroland
are expensive (or they have to sell with less profit). how about prices
for european made cars in the US?

Since all computer manufacture moved to the Far East, the price
difference between US and UK prices has not been all that great (mainly,
just VAT).


and as another poster said: yes, flying to the US and buying over there
is cheap. I once calculated roundtrip, 1 week car rental, 1 week motel,
check out and 10 hours of C172 is a tad cheaper than renting 10 hours
here locally. due to the exchange rate it might be even cheaper today.

My last stay in the US in 2002 would cost me today about 50% of the
money I paid back then.

#m
--
I am not a terrorist http://www.casualdisobedience.com/

Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:

VAT is not uniform across the EU. So far we're still independent
countries, taxation laws are national affairs. The majority of
countries have VAT somewhere around 15 or 20 %, often with lower or no
tax for food, housing, cultural items etc.


And Europeans think that USAians are provincial? What the hell would be
considered "cultural items"?

The same thing is true today in Buffalo. Canadians are coming over the
border and shopping in the US. They strip down to their underwear on the
parking lot, and change into their new clothes. The old stuff is thrown out
the window on the way out of the parking lot. Some bring empty suitcases
and try to tell Canadian customs they're returning from a long trip.

And not just electronics. Years ago I know a young Brit who with
others would fly to the use on shopping excursions. They could fly
over, purchase their clothes, pick up as much extra as allowed and
pretty much pay for their own new clothes AND the round trip airline
ticket.

Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:


I found a list of items with reduced tax for your entertainment:


wood fuel

Could they promote something that is less efficient?


theatre/concert/movie tickets


Hell, by that logic a 4x4 and a six pack should be tax free.

The cheapest notebooks I find go for EUR 450 here, but the comparison
is probably meaningless without statings features and peripherals. I
don't think the low market ones are anything to write home about, but
your 399 one probably isn't either. I bought myself a nice one last
week from a supermarket chain. It's an Intel dual core 1.66 GHz, with 2
Gig RAM, 250 Gig HD, non-shared graphics card, 15'' widescreen, multi
format DVD burner, digital TV tuner card with remote, web cam, mic,
fingerprint sensor, all peripherals that are considered standards these
days (network, WLAN, sound, video, SD card), Winderz and lots of
software preinstalled, and a notebook bag. All for 899, which I
consider a bargain, with all those features you'd pay more in regular
stores. Now compare

Here's what I got for $399 a few months ago here in the US:

Compaq Presario C563NR Notebook PC

# Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor 520 with 533MHz frontside bus, 1MB L2
cache and 1.6GHz processor speed
# 512MB DDR2 memory for multitasking power (upgraded to 1526 MB for
another $80)
# Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive
# 15.4" WXGA high-definition TFT-LCD widescreen display with
BrightView technology and 1280 x 800 resolution.
# 80GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
# Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with up to 64MB shared memory;
built-in Altec Lansing audio
# 3 high-speed USB 2.0 ports for fast digital video, audio and data
transfer; S-video TV-out
# Built-in high-speed wireless LAN (802.11b/g); built-in 10/100 Base-T
Ethernet LAN (with RJ-45 connector); high speed 56 Kbps modem
# Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Edition operating system
preinstalled.

This little wonder has been marvelous, fast, connects wirelessly
automatically to any available network, and -- at less than $500 (with
the additional RAM I added later), it's almost unbelievably cheap. My
first laptop -- also a Presario -- was a Pentium III that cost nearly
$3,000, so the comparision beween the two is striking.

Sure, it's not the "latest greatest" -- but it does everything I want,
and is nearly disposable at that price...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Do tell, Jay. Where did you get it?

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
...
The cheapest notebooks I find go for EUR 450 here, but the comparison
is probably meaningless without statings features and peripherals. I
don't think the low market ones are anything to write home about, but
your 399 one probably isn't either. I bought myself a nice one last
week from a supermarket chain. It's an Intel dual core 1.66 GHz, with 2
Gig RAM, 250 Gig HD, non-shared graphics card, 15'' widescreen, multi
format DVD burner, digital TV tuner card with remote, web cam, mic,
fingerprint sensor, all peripherals that are considered standards these
days (network, WLAN, sound, video, SD card), Winderz and lots of
software preinstalled, and a notebook bag. All for 899, which I
consider a bargain, with all those features you'd pay more in regular
stores. Now compare

Here's what I got for $399 a few months ago here in the US:

Compaq Presario C563NR Notebook PC

# Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor 520 with 533MHz frontside bus, 1MB L2
cache and 1.6GHz processor speed
# 512MB DDR2 memory for multitasking power (upgraded to 1526 MB for
another $80)
# Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive
# 15.4" WXGA high-definition TFT-LCD widescreen display with
BrightView technology and 1280 x 800 resolution.
# 80GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
# Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with up to 64MB shared memory;
built-in Altec Lansing audio
# 3 high-speed USB 2.0 ports for fast digital video, audio and data
transfer; S-video TV-out
# Built-in high-speed wireless LAN (802.11b/g); built-in 10/100 Base-T
Ethernet LAN (with RJ-45 connector); high speed 56 Kbps modem
# Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Edition operating system
preinstalled.

This little wonder has been marvelous, fast, connects wirelessly
automatically to any available network, and -- at less than $500 (with
the additional RAM I added later), it's almost unbelievably cheap. My
first laptop -- also a Presario -- was a Pentium III that cost nearly
$3,000, so the comparision beween the two is striking.

Sure, it's not the "latest greatest" -- but it does everything I want,
and is nearly disposable at that price...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Was it available with XP instead of that pos Vista?

Jim

--
"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right."
--Henry Ford

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
...
The cheapest notebooks I find go for EUR 450 here, but the comparison
is probably meaningless without statings features and peripherals. I
don't think the low market ones are anything to write home about, but
your 399 one probably isn't either. I bought myself a nice one last
week from a supermarket chain. It's an Intel dual core 1.66 GHz, with 2
Gig RAM, 250 Gig HD, non-shared graphics card, 15'' widescreen, multi
format DVD burner, digital TV tuner card with remote, web cam, mic,
fingerprint sensor, all peripherals that are considered standards these
days (network, WLAN, sound, video, SD card), Winderz and lots of
software preinstalled, and a notebook bag. All for 899, which I
consider a bargain, with all those features you'd pay more in regular
stores. Now compare

Here's what I got for $399 a few months ago here in the US:

Compaq Presario C563NR Notebook PC

# Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor 520 with 533MHz frontside bus, 1MB L2
cache and 1.6GHz processor speed
# 512MB DDR2 memory for multitasking power (upgraded to 1526 MB for
another $80)
# Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive
# 15.4" WXGA high-definition TFT-LCD widescreen display with
BrightView technology and 1280 x 800 resolution.
# 80GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
# Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with up to 64MB shared memory;
built-in Altec Lansing audio
# 3 high-speed USB 2.0 ports for fast digital video, audio and data
transfer; S-video TV-out
# Built-in high-speed wireless LAN (802.11b/g); built-in 10/100 Base-T
Ethernet LAN (with RJ-45 connector); high speed 56 Kbps modem
# Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Edition operating system
preinstalled.

This little wonder has been marvelous, fast, connects wirelessly
automatically to any available network, and -- at less than $500 (with
the additional RAM I added later), it's almost unbelievably cheap. My
first laptop -- also a Presario -- was a Pentium III that cost nearly
$3,000, so the comparision beween the two is striking.

Sure, it's not the "latest greatest" -- but it does everything I want,
and is nearly disposable at that price...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"