What you describe is very typical. Very few of the high tech companies in
the Boston area actually "manufacture" in the sense that I knew it as a kid
in Chicago. They never cut metal or paint it. They don't fab, stuff,
solder or test PC boards. They just put things together that others make to
spec. Recently even the putting together is offsite.

As more and more of what's important in products like radars becomes the
software, we'll see more products that differ only in software. My choice
of Furuno for our big radar (I think, tune in later when I actually buy it)
is based entirely on software and user interface. In truth, I haven't even
looked at the antenna specs to see if there are any differences between
Furuno, Raymarine, and Simrad.

There's a fair amount of this in marine electronics. JRC made the Raytheon
41XX -- seems strange, as Raytheon is one of the premier radar companies in
the world, but that's the way it was. Airmar makes most of the industry's
depth sounder transducers. And so forth.


--
Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com


..
"Todd" wrote in message
m...
(Larry W4CSC) wrote in message
...
Are you actually making this, or are you relabeling off-the-shelf
stuff as someone says?

Are you using this "Virtual Serial Port" software B&B is selling?

Larry W4CSC

"Very funny, Scotty! Now, BEAM ME MY CLOTHES! KIRK OUT!"

Hi Larry,

Making versus relabling is a really grey issue when it comes to
computer hardware. Just look at your wireless access point. They're
using a CPU and board from one company, having the case manufactured
by a different overseas company, and then using someone else's
(probably prism based) 802.11 card and external antenna. Some access
point manufacturers write their own firmware and others use linux
(e.g. the Dell 802.11 access points).

We're doing the same thing, very similar to Dell in that we have a
domestic supplier we work with for the CPU and case, another vendor
for the wireless transmitter, andenna, and solid state storage, linux
as the embedded platform, and then our own embedded software on top of
that. We currently do the assembly in-house.

With regards to the virtual serial port software we currently use our
own. With our beta program we will be evaluating our own virtual
serial port software against another vendors and whichever comes out
on top is what we will include with the final marine wireless
navigation server.

Best,
Todd

--
Marine Wireless
http://www.marinewireless.us