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FireWire is expensive!

I

imacintel

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 12, 2006
1,581
0
Wow, I was looking on Apple's and Staple's site and FireWire cables cost $35.99 CAD!
 
Look around and you should be able to find an inexpensive $6 cable, since places like Staple's make money off that type of thing.

Sell you a camera, and a $35 cable -- and the cable probably is the bigger $ profit item.
 
It appears that the Staples selection is all Belkin cables. Those are always far too expensive.

I see that there are cheaper ones sold through Future Shop, including a nifty retractable style for C$5.
 
I really feel like the cost of accessory cables is one of the biggest rackets in consumer electronics. A piece of wire and some plastic isn't that expensive. Period.
 
There is a site I really like for all my cables:

http://www.pccables.com

There prices are good, they have never blown a deal, their selection is excellent. I think their website is very functional, perhaps not fancy. But, you can get in & out fairly easily. I usually buy to replenish stock. So, combining products in a single shipment makes a difference in 'landed cost'. They have always done this. They are certainly worth a comparison quote.
 
eBay all the way for cables. I buy firewire usb and power plugs for US and world for less than $5 each all the time. Quite often the FW is less than a buck and then a few dollars shipping.
 
ChickenSwartz said:
I really feel like the cost of accessory cables is one of the biggest rackets in consumer electronics. A piece of wire and some plastic isn't that expensive. Period.
Click to expand...

The way people are stealing copper around here, you'd think that it was worth quite a bit. The price of cables is certainly dear. I'm not sure about buying the cheapest, though, but as long as the quality is good, cheaper is better.

I bought my last FireWire cable through J&R Music/Electronics/Camera World.
 
I'm not too sure about cheap retractible cables (self-rewinding ones) - I brought a few - usb, ethernet etc, and they all went bad. Ended up throwing them away, even tho only ocassionally used them.

Maybe God hates self re-winding cables as an abomination against nature or something. "Foolish mortals, you invented rats nets of cables, and you'll learn to deal with them!"
 
Monoprice.com is absolutely the best place to buy any sort of cable.

Here are their firewire cables. Plus, I believe that they ship to Canada.
 
Last time I needed a cable, I turned to pricegrabber.com, and got my 4 to 6 pin firewire cable (3 ft) for around 1.49 + shipping. After shipping, I was still under 5 bucks, while the identical cable was sold in a store for between 25 and 40, depending on where you looked.
 
I went to London Drugs and they had illuminated 10 foot FireWire 6 pin cables for $20CAD. :)
 
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