Are gold plated printer (or any) cables worth the extra money?

[n7]

Marketing.

 

[DukeN]

Being a former Staples employee I can add that they are a total fraud.

The regular Belkin USB 2.0 cables state they have gold connections as well, they're just not coated externally and the packaging isn't as sexy as the purple one.

For data being sent, it doesn't really matter since it doesn't get distorted or 'lost' like an analog audio stream might, for which the cable type may make a difference. At best you may get a neglegible speed improvement.

Third, the cost differenetial between the gold plated and the non gold plated isn't huge. The manufacturing cost is typically in the pennies for both, and the chains buy them at ridiculously low prices, even factoring in the thousandfold margins claimed by the manufacturer. Retail stores rape people even more by charging an insane amount for them - biggest ripoff in the industry IMO. The $2 USB 2.0 cable you buy from geeks.com or FactoryDirect (in Canada) will probably give you 99% performance compared to the $45 Belkin Gold cable.

Because of a lack of innovation and overwhelming greed, the execs push these and warranty/service plan sales down to the lower-level pencil pushers such as the district managers, who drive that down the throats of the store level managers who totally molest their employees into selling them. Some stores will even take the 'regular' cables (which are brutally overpriced) off the shelf to force customers into buying the 'gold' ones. As if the stores weren't pillaging customers enough, the printer manufacturer's don't include cables that would cost them under $1 to include when bought in bulk, because of an unwritten agreement with the retailers, for it would eat into the retailers profits heavily.

 

[HDTVMan]

Coming to MTV: PIMP MY PRINTER CABLES!

Next will be Spinners on the Print Heads.

 

[trend]

Gold plated connectors are great.. if you need it.. Anyone look at a CPU lately? What type of connectors does it has?

I have developed embedded systems that use both gold and non gold.. The main benefit for -me- has been (since I do not need the highest speed connector) is that gold connectors do not corrode (man i cannot spell) as fast.

Also, gold connectors are SO much more expensive from a manufactures perspective.

For you, No, don't get gold platted. but high speed or HIGH signal quality is needed, go with gold

 

[beverage]

if you look at the packaging closely, (at least the old style package--i know belkin recently changed styles) the gold cables actually state that the cable meets the current High-Speed USB standards, i'm pretty sure the non-gold cables do not contain this exact wording.

that being said, i'm not using gold cables, and everything seems to work fine.

the 10' belkin gold USB cables cost Office Depot stores just over $5 a cable, the customer pays just over $30

 

[ElTorrente]

Gold plated connections turn your 0's and 1's into 2's and 3's. They are awesome!

 

[Kyanzes]

Originally posted by: bmacd
Years and years ago when I worked at Best Buy, it was highly suggested to us that if we wanted to get any hours, we get the big sales on printer accessories since it's such a monster of a markup. We'd only display a few "standard" stainless plated printer cables, and flood the aisle with gold plated Belkin cables, costing over $40.

Is the connectivity even remotely better with a gold plated cable? Is there ANY benefit besides lightening your wallet the gold cables provide?

-=bmacd=-

As gold doesn't react neither with oxygen nor with water (condensation comes to mind in office environment) it is certainly better than other metal based solutions. I personally don't believe that the connection speed or stability would be affected much though.

 

[Stretchman]

Glad to see this thread, I always had that same question myself. :thumbsup:

 

[marvw]

They use gold on all edge connectors and cables because gold will not oxidize (Like most metals) which deduces or breaks your contact. Look at all your cards in your system and they have gold contacts. They can sit in storage for years without a problem.
(Ran a printed circuit lad may years ago, Where we made proto type boards and we used liquid gold on the edge connectors for this reason) to give you a time frame we had a screaming 8086 for our main frame.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Phil
4. The Belkin rep told us that the connections in the regular cables are gold-plated anyway, so there's no need for these things but they make them a lot of money.
Completely pointless.

EXACTLY. Even the cheaper cables are gold-plated where it really counts - the actual contact fingers. The biggest differentiation that I see in printer cables, is the gauge of wire used, and the amount of shielding. I've seen longer cables that are poorly-shielded become the victims of nearby interference, likely due to unshielded AC cables nearby. Nothing like print jobs getting randomly garbled in the middle. Likewise, there are some minor differences in wiring between straight-through, bi-dir, and IEEE-1284 cables. The last one being comprised of a number of twisted-pair connections, like ethernet cables.

To be sure, the Belkin-brand cables are fairly nice, and seem to be heavy-duty, but it has nothing to do with the gold-plating on the outer ground shield, that's just for show, to justify the nearly obscene markup on those things. I usually grab mine on clearance for a mere fraction of the asking price, or I just order OEM generic cables, but well-shielded ones.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: DukeN
For data being sent, it doesn't really matter since it doesn't get distorted or 'lost' like an analog audio stream might, for which the cable type may make a difference. At best you may get a neglegible speed improvement.

Actually, you have that backwards. At some level, even "digital" signals are transmitted in analog. Square waveforms can easily get distorted along the way between transmitter and reciever, such that they don't seem so square anymore. Likewise, if there are stubs or dissimilar-enough impedance in the cables, that there can be waveform reflections that get mistaken for the original signal, and if the cable is too long and there is too much loss, the waveforms can get attenuated so much that the digital recievers on the other end don't properly pick up the signal.

But note that gold-plating itself doesn't really have anything to do with those issues. Also, there is no difference in signalling speeds caused by different-quality cables, although poor-quality cables that suffer from transmission problems due to the above issues, can cause drops in throughput. Perhaps that's what you meant.

The rest of your post is all completely true.

 

[HDTVMan]

Wow didnt think a $3.00 printer cable could cause so much chatter.

Printer Cable is a Printer Cable. The cheapest is all you need.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: DukeN
For data being sent, it doesn't really matter since it doesn't get distorted or 'lost' like an analog audio stream might, for which the cable type may make a difference. At best you may get a neglegible speed improvement.

Actually, you have that backwards. At some level, even "digital" signals are transmitted in analog. Square waveforms can easily get distorted along the way between transmitter and reciever, such that they don't seem so square anymore. Likewise, if there are stubs or dissimilar-enough impedance in the cables, that there can be waveform reflections that get mistaken for the original signal, and if the cable is too long and there is too much loss, the waveforms can get attenuated so much that the digital recievers on the other end don't properly pick up the signal.

But note that gold-plating itself doesn't really have anything to do with those issues. Also, there is no difference in signalling speeds caused by different-quality cables, although poor-quality cables that suffer from transmission problems due to the above issues, can cause drops in throughput. Perhaps that's what you meant.

The rest of your post is all completely true.

Yeah but that waveform has to get completely f'ked up before sht hits the fan.

 

[Peter]

They might make a difference if your computer is in a corrosive environment - at sea, in a salt mine or something like that. The rest (improved signal and whatnot) is marketing bull.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: Peter
in a salt mine

:laugh: