IBM's hard drive yield was already low, and the failure rate was even higher when it was bumped or dropped.
The initial stage presents a huge challenge to after-sales service, and also a test of the brand's quality.
To address this, Xing Baohua tried adding foam pads around the hard drive to reduce the impact of drops on the read/write heads.
I temporarily tested ten hard drives by dropping them from a distance of one and a half meters while they were protected by foam. Seven of them failed.
Such a high failure rate scared Xing Baohua so much that he dared not conduct any tests.
This is even more fragile than porcelain! We need to talk to IBM about how to solve the problem of it being dropped and bumped.
The IBM people came back and accepted Xing Baohua's question, but this was all they could do with micro hard drives. Who would drop them for fun?
When Xing Baohua took out the tablet and a small box, he pretended to drop them accidentally and said, "Accidental drops are very common. We can't let our customers think that they're damaged just because they dropped it once. What if there's important data on the hard drive?"
The IBM representative shrugged and said, "Then tell them to be careful. If it breaks, we can fix it; if the data is lost, there's nothing we can do. That's all IBM can do. Of course, we will accept your suggestion and try our best to make changes according to your advice."
Having said all that, what could Xing Baohua do? He could only reduce the amount of goods he ordered.
The order was already small, and if it were reduced further, IBM wouldn't stand for it. It's okay if the order is smaller, but the price will be different.
It's a real headache. Hard drive prices are going up, how am I going to sell Xing Baohua's goods?
After thinking about it, I'll stick with the same stuff. If all else fails, I'll use it on my laptop.
It was redesigned as an ultrabook, emphasizing its thinness, lightness, high-end features, and high specifications.
Let's scam the rich first. Like IBM said, if the hard drive is broken, just fix it, right?
It fell!
That's not a quality issue, it's human error, and the customer has to pay for the repairs themselves!
Although there is money to be made from after-sales service, the brand reputation will be affected to some extent.
At this point, there was no time to worry about anything else. The priority was to produce a few prototypes, lay a solid foundation, and accumulate technical expertise to prepare for the future.
In order to stay at the forefront of technology, Xing Baohua had no choice but to take the risk.
Like Nokia, it's impossible to smash something to pieces, pick it up, put it back together, and still make calls. After all, there's a mechanical hard drive inside the device, which is quite fragile.
Ultrabooks are easy to make; aside from the casing and screen size, the motherboard and other components don't need to be changed, just follow the proportions.
Cover the hard drive with a thick foam pad to enhance its shock resistance.
It's okay to drop it once or twice, but if it happens a couple more times, you might have to replace the hard drive.
Whether it's a tablet or an ultrabook, there are readily available motherboard solutions; you just need to replace the hard drive.
The only challenging one is MP3.
Xing Baohua couldn't create the compact media players of later generations; his device could only be half the size of a cassette player.
It consists of only two or three important components: hard drive, motherboard, and power supply compartment.
The motherboard needs to be designed; there are no examples to copy, so the architecture is entirely based on imagination, and the decoding chip is also crucial.
In fact, these were all minor issues in Xing Baohua's eyes.
However, the pricing gave him a headache; he had agonized over this miniature mechanical hard drive countless times.
If the quality were similar to that of the iPod, Xing Baohua could confidently set a high price, making it affordable for many ordinary people.
However, pricing is now based on hard drive capacity, and with research and development costs included, even the cheapest one costs over three hundred US dollars. Not to mention the largest capacity ones which cost over a thousand US dollars.
That price could buy two or three computers.
Why buy it? Just to listen to music? Aren't cassette tapes better?
The price is cheap, even cassette tapes aren't that expensive! But most people would feel the pinch at three or four hundred US dollars.
I wonder what you'll think when you buy it and find out that downloading it also costs money.
Xing Baohua spent a lot of effort acquiring film and television music copyrights globally, hoping to make money from digital music.
Now it's become a burden, and a rather unpleasant one at that.
We won't be stuck with these hard drives; we can only produce a small batch first and give them away as non-sale items.
Giving gifts to people requires careful planning. For example, you can buy advertising space at music festivals or award ceremonies by using naming rights, and give it to some award-winning celebrities as a gift.
Another mystery is that this thing is unique and expensive.
They repackage junk as luxury goods, emphasizing its high price!
After figuring out his approach, Xing Baohua suddenly understood a lot. He decided to let the hardware team design the system here while he took the hard drive back to the company to study its performance and see if there were any other ways to make money from it.
Not long after returning to the company, Huang Xingyao, who was far away in America, called Xing Baohua, saying that the private investigator he had hired had some leads.
Xing Baohua checked the time; it was already late at night in America. Huang Xingyao had called him, probably having just received the news.
"Have you confirmed the other party's identity information?" Xing Baohua asked.
“It’s confirmed. They used to work in Silicon Valley, and perhaps their free-spirited nature made them unsuitable for office work, so they started doing shady business. There are four of them in total. I’ve sent all the detailed information to your email,” Huang Xingyao said.
"Okay, you've worked hard. Get some rest!" Xing Baohua said, then hung up the phone, put the hard drive he had just received aside, turned on his computer, logged into his email, and looked at the documents Huang Xingyao had sent him.
After reading it, pass the information on to Zhao Shanhai, and his people will go to Da Meizi Country to help him collect the debt.
Of course, it would be best to get some useful information out of them, but if you can't get anything out of them, it's fine to get your money back.
I won't be able to eat or sleep if this mole isn't found!
If we sell some of our technologies or R&D projects, allowing our competitors to develop and launch their products on the market sooner, what competitive advantage will we have left?
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