Oh, look, there's Kindle Fire kicking Apple in the pants.

[Raydeus]

Re: Oh, look, there's Kindle Fire kicking Apple in the pants.

For comparison: The retail price for a newly released console game here averages $120

Holy mother of the Moogles! And I complain about paying 30%-50% more than the retail price for games and electronics in the US (no rebates for me either, of course.) <_<;

Is it due to shipping costs and/or import taxes? Also, are you subject to Australia's distribution or do you have your own?

[Empedocles]

Re: Oh, look, there's Kindle Fire kicking Apple in the pants.

Not much of a reader, but I'm fairly sure they're referring to college/technical books rather than novels and the likes. Many of my engineering books cost $100-$150, but I can import paperback international versions for $50.

Ah, I see. I'll have a look around and get a real price but off the top of my head, a higher-education textbook costs approximately $70.

Holy mother of the Moogles! And I complain about paying 30%-50% more than the retail price for games and electronics in the US (no rebates for me either, of course.) <_<;

Is it due to shipping costs and/or import taxes? Also, are you subject to Australia's distribution or do you have your own?

As we are PAL like Europe and the only major gaming retailer that exists in NZ is EBGames (and you know who owns them) and a minor retailer is JB Hi-Fi that has games but is more of 'consumer electronics' store, our shipments are attached to Australia's. Which means that I believe it goes through them first, adding onto any fees related to shipping etc.

There's also the fact that we have less total population than New York, so our gaming market is very small. That adds onto fees for bringing games into the country and retail profit margins.

[Raydeus]

Re: Oh, look, there's Kindle Fire kicking Apple in the pants.

Ouch. >_<

[Aeni]

Re: Oh, look, there's Kindle Fire kicking Apple in the pants.

College text books in America generally are (a) hard cover bound and (b) cost too much. When I mean it costs too much, I mean it costs too much. $100 to $200 and sometimes even more (Law School, Med School, etc sometimes runs to $300)

It's basically the whole Adobe Software overpriced shit but for books.

Text books for anything else below college are not expensive although I suspect schools still get shafted by the publishers. I picked up a math text book (brand new) for my daughter at $12 off Amazon.com (She's in the 5th grade)

[Feba]

Re: Oh, look, there's Kindle Fire kicking Apple in the pants.

yes; I bought a used paperback stateside for over $60US; this for a book that was split into two volumes so they could sell it to you twice. The first edition had identical content, and lasted two semesters at least.

Math, $250 for a single book. No option but to buy it new and hardcover, since there was no paperback, and the class demanded a new book so you could register for their online homework system (great for the publishers, great for the teachers, total ass for the students)

Luckily I was in Honors English, which meant I didn't have to get any textbooks-- just download a few MLA guides and buy some novels. Novels are obviously much cheaper; especially if you go to a used book store. So much for HPB; I literally bought books cheaper than the college bookstore buys them back for. Made a few bucks for lunch one day by buying some there and selling them back to the school.

On the other hand, I've never spent more than $30US for a textbook in Japan or Taiwan; albeit all of my textbooks here have been soft cover. My total cost in textbooks for a semester in Japan was less than the cost of a single textbook stateside.

[Malacite]

Re: Oh, look, there's Kindle Fire kicking Apple in the pants.

College text books in America generally are (a) hard cover bound and (b) cost too much. When I mean it costs too much, I mean it costs too much. $100 to $200 and sometimes even more (Law School, Med School, etc sometimes runs to $300)

POLITICAL DEBATE, RAWR!!!!

No but seriously wtf, you have the Chinese getting top notch post secondary education for often 1/10th the cost it is in the USA and graduating with virtually little to no debt. Contrast this to North Americans (it's really bad as of late here in Canada) where the avg student debt by the time you graduate is between $40~$60 thousand.

[Armando]

Re: Oh, look, there's Kindle Fire kicking Apple in the pants.

No but seriously wtf,

A stupid population is an easily controlled population. Robbing the smart people along the way is just icing on the cake.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Oh, look, there's Kindle Fire kicking Apple in the pants.

Debated biting the bullet on Kindle Fire but decided to wait it out and see what happens with tablets. Plus there were rumors that both Apple and the Kindle folks might have some better things in the pipes early next year.

In the meantime I had enough credit with Verizon to spring for an iPhone 4 as an upgrade, so thats a thing. iOS 5 adresses some of my concerns with Apple's landlocked storage with iCloud but being a slave to iTunes syncing still is a tad annoying when you just want to download or transfer mp3s from elsewhere.