Very nice. Other World Computing is a very reputable place to buy though. Still a good price for a retailer. Just thought I'd share it in case somebody didn't want to take more of a chance on a seller on eBay. Thanks for your link!
I am generally in agreement that OWC is a reputable seller of Mac products and long have been. I have bought a few things from them over the years, including the SATA II SSD whose logic controller was designed to auto-switch to SATA I, to make my mid-2004 Power Mac G5 boot from it without freezing (as it would with SATA III SSDs which didn’t gracefully switch down to SATA I).
What undermines their reputation isn’t their reputation for consistency, but rather in the paradox of their absorbing several competitors over the last several years, unchecked, and, bereft of that competition, effects what seasoned Mac folks might best describe as an OWC premium or “convenience” fee — a slouching toward monopolistic practice.
Nowadays, OWC can basically just set-and-forget whatever price they so choose on any and most everything they sell. Aside from commodity products, like branded SSDs sold elsewhere, purchasers face fewer (and sometimes no) reasonable alternatives for shopping around those prices with other vendors when OWC have rendered themselves the only Mac superstore game in town/planet through a steady line of buying competitors without much, if any regulatory oversight.
What OWC do, however unintended, is sway consumers to do better diligence on the homework of their shopping and purchasing decisions (including, yes, learning to discern wheat from chaff and gold from pyrite in open, unregulated markets). That‘s sort of the idea
@TheShortTimer is hinting at here: if a consumer does their homework, comparable and ever higher quality offerings at lower prices than what OWC post are very much out there.
tl;dr: regulated competition benefits the consumer, while sucking the air of competition from the room asphyxiates everyone else.
