[Gizzer]

I'm looking to buy a single stick of 512Mb RAM for a 15" Powerbook. After looking on Crucial I looked under the 15" 1.25Ghz PB and 512 costs £91.64. I then looked at the 15" 1.5Ghz PB and 512 costs £71.66. As far as I can tell, this is exactly the same RAM yet there is a £20 price discrepancy.

I checked on the US Crucial store and the same price difference exists there too - a $30 discrepancy.

Am I missing something or are they ripping people off? If the RAM is the same I obviously want the cheaper stuff!!

[alcimedes]

one is probably low profile, if i had to guess.

[Gizzer]

Originally Posted by alcimedes one is probably low profile, if i had to guess.

Forgive my ignorance - What is low profile RAM?

[alcimedes]

depending on the size of your laptop, you can put thicker or thinner chips inside them.

in very thin laptops, they tend to require low profile RAM. it's RAM that only has memory chips on one side of the chip, not both. although they both contain the same amount of memory, the low profile chip contains that much RAM via half as many chips. the larger chips cost more, and drive up the price.

so a low profile 128 meg chip would likely have 4 32MB chips on one half. a regular DIMM would have 8 16MB chips, 4 on each side.

in this case, it seems like it might be a latency issue. the higher priced one is a 2.5 latency, the cheaper one is likely a 3 then. although i'm with you, i'm not sure why exactly they don't list the cheaper one as an option. here in the states the low end (256MB chips) and high end (1GB) chips cost the exact same.

go figure. you could call and ask.

[Moogs]

Crucial screws with their RAM pricing by the hour sometimes. It's crazy. You'd think you're were buying commodities at the NYSE or something.

[Gargoyle]

I think price fixing is a bit of a hasty conclusion. If you click the PC2700 link on the left of the crucial site, instead of choosing a make and model. You will see in the 200 pin SODIMM section there are indeed two different 512M components.

One has "AP" at the end of the number, and is indeed £20 more expensive. From the site however, I cannot see what the difference is. Both have 2.5 timings, unbuffered, no parity. As suggested, one might be low profile - but it doesn't clearly state that on the site.

[Gizzer]

Hmm - that is wierd I just followed your PC2700 link & like you say there are 2 types that match this price. The only difference in the listing is the CL=2.5 - wonder why they don't list this value for both?

[usurp]

yeah they price fix according to your OS and browser type. I had a thread here somewhere with screenshots taken on a windows machine using IE and a Mac using firefox. the mac with firefox showed a cheaper price by a couple of dolars.

[Moogs]

This is true to some degree, but I wonder if it more depends on the model of computer more than the OS or browser. IOW, if you choose an expensive computer (particularly a new model) they'll list the prices higher. I DO think mostly their prices are based on demand and what's in their warehouse at any given time, but there are other things affecting price also as being noted here.

Example, a couple months ago, I was going to purchase 2GB worth because the prices had fallen a long ways for 1GB chips of PC 3200. From a steady $380 per chip during the months of spring and early summer, down below $300.

Every couple of days I would watching the prices listed for PC 3200, under the G5 2 GHz section of their store. It went down and down, then went up for a few days then down further. I made the purchase at a predetermined point (about $250 per chip) that I felt was a good price. A few minutes later (just for fun), I went back and just clicked the generic PC 3200 price (not relating to G5), it was almost $10 cheaper than what I had just bought and the price I purchased at was still the same on the G5 page.

When I went and looked at the dual 2.5GHz page, it was more expensive than the page I had generated for the 2GHz model (probably because it had just recently been announced and people were paying a premium for it, etc.).

So I don't know what their exact formula is, but I do know this: the model of computer has more to do with it than the make, and sometimes the generic links show lower prices than the guided store. Maybe because they think someone who knows right off what they need is more aware of a "good market price" than someone who doesn't know, maybe for some other reason (tied to a different warehouse or something).

So, set a price in your mind, check both links and when you get close, buy. The same day go look again, if it goes lower call them and get a credit to your order (may end up as a separate transaction - it did in my case). But you have to do it the same day, if you let even 24 hours pass they won't credit you the difference because of their commodity pricing model.

[Eugene]

It has been demonstrated that certain Crucial part numbers produce different prices based on your cookies. This is fact.

That's what usurp is talking about.

[Moogs]

Yes, and cookies could very easily store the last model you priced RAM for, not just your platform or browser. They could store any number of things. Quite possibly the number of visits in a given time-frame, and pricing then based on that.

It's a little shifty whatever their methods, but they still have the best quality RAM for the best prices IMO. Usually far more reasonable than Kingston (at least for larger modules).

[usurp]

found the thread

http://forums.applenova.com/showthre...hlight=crucial

and here are the 2 comparrisson pics
http://www.unex-t.com/pccrucial.jpg
http://www.unex-t.com/maccrucial.jpg


same 512MB stick on different OS's using different browsers gives different prices

$118.8 in IE6 (XP)
$112.26 in Firefox (XP) and IE5.2 (OS X)
$108.99 in Firefox (OS X)