IBM used to sell a laser printer that went at five or six pages a minute. It was locked at that speed in software, as a more expensive version with the same everything went 10-12 pages per minute.
This has been happening on PC processor speeds for decades.
Lots of things like that. A 1 Tara-byte hard drive is in many cases a 2 Tara-byte drive that could not pass the 2T final inspection and was downgraded.
You remember those “10 transistor radios” from the early 60’s? Well the manufacturing yield on transistors was pretty low in the early days. So they had lots of scrap transistors. That 10 transistor radio was really a 6 transistor radio with 4 dead transistors soldered onto the board that were not hooked to anything. Begs the question, is it a 10 transistor radio or not?
“IBM used to sell a laser printer that went at five or six pages a minute. It was locked at that speed in software, as a more expensive version with the same everything went 10-12 pages per minute.”
IBM has been doing similar tricks since the 1960’s. I think that they called it upgrading.
Now basically every electronic company does it.
#3 I install printers every week at the Helpdesk job I have. You download the Ricoh or HP drivers and you see they are for several models and languages. My joke is they charge $100 more for the new nameplate on the printer.