Quote Originally Posted by rdeloe View Post
Sadly minor differentiation is an all too common marketing strategy. Visit your local drugstore and start comparing the version of cough medicine. I found two versions by the same manufacturer that had exactly -- I mean exactly -- the same medicinal and non-medicinal ingredients. The pharmacist gave it the old college try to explain why they were different... but after reading the boxes she finally had to admit that they were identical, and the goal of the manufacturer was to sell you both bottles.

Them and their horses indeed!
Yeah, it's pretty common practice. The only difference between Excedrin and Excedrin for Migraines is the directions and the price. The pills are identical. Glaxo Smith Kline will even readily admit that, though their argument is that they're not legally allowed to sell them as the same product because of FDA regulations on the different directions and they can't control how retailers price their items.

And it's also not uncommon for electronics to be identical, yet have different software or firmware to control features. Or they might pull a board out at the end of the production line, or house it in a slightly different plastic body that hides a feature. It costs less money to make two things identical at the factory, and then just flip a switch at the end of the line to give illusion of two different products. Or in this case, load different lenses in to the lens attaching machine on different days (or however they do it).

Computer CPUs are another product that's done like this. They'll make a bunch at a time on a single wafer. Then they cut them down after production, and label some as, let's say 4 GHz processors, and others as 3.5 GHz and others as 2.8GHz. Then they'll set the processors to those speeds in firmware, and sell them at three (or more) different price ranges, even though they're all virtually the same. Now they will test them to see how stable they run at those listed speeds, so the 4GHz may actually handle heat better than the 2.8 GHz version. But there are also market factors involved, so if they want to keep the demand high for 4GHz processors, they may sell a bunch of processors that tested at 4GHz as 3GHz (and set them as such in the firmware), to ensure they're not over saturating their high end product. Hence why overclocking processors is so common, and so unpredictable.

Or look at most any table top power tools. One look at all of the various brands of drill presses or scroll saws (for example) will tell you they're all the same thing, made in the same plant using the same core parts, just with some slightly different features (there are only a few different options and each brand seems to choose a unique combination of those same options) and different colors of plastic and stickers. Yet as the brands change, so do the prices, and oddly enough, the user ratings and product reviews.

It's the way the modern world works. Don't get mad over it. Because if you do, you'll spend the rest of your life in a state of fury, because it is EVERYWHERE!