On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 21:54:21 +0100, "IMM" wrote:



Buy two then, they are cheap enough.


Twice the space :-(

Two crappy products != one good product.

I am not on about crappy products, just good DIY products.

You get what you pay for.

Top of the range
trade tools are a waste of money for DIY.

Not necessarily. It depends on a number of factors:

a) The quality, accuracy and ease of use of each
b) The reliability
c) Productivity as measured by whether the job can be completed more
quickly and/or to a better standard.
d) The trade off between time and cost for the purchaser.

You were on about down time. Two
cheapish tools, compared to trade tools does not give down time.

That's a fallacy because of course it does at some point.
Let's assume that a cheap tool will fail in half the time of the
quality one. Your argument is that when the cheap tool fails, you
can pick up the second one and keep going.

However, the argument is more complex than that. If you throw away
both cheap tools when they fail, then you have incurred no cost in
going to get them fixed. If you wish to invoke the warranty, then it
is going to cost time and money to do so. As a minimum, packing and
taking to post office or returning to B&Q etc. This is all time and
money. If you consider that your time costs money, even for DIY
purposes, then this is a significant issue. I don't want to waste
half a day returning something.

However, the quality tool, apart from most likely providing a better
and faster result, will be worth getting repaired or the spares to fix
when it does eventually fail. So if I take that route, it represents
better value for money taken over a period of time.
Moreover, if more has been paid for the item then it is much more
reasonable to expect a high level of service. With careful selection
of vendor and retailer, that generally happens, in my experience.





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..andy

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