Talk:Microdot

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What made the microdot so successful? How did they make the words into the dot?

[edit] Regarding the price of microdot identification

Current revision (22:34, 4 September 2006) (edit): I made what I believed to be a grammatical change, improving readability: the price of the procedure was quoted as "USD75", which I changed to $75(US Dollars). Can anyone confirm or correct this pricing? A reference is needed, as this seems like a very cheap method to prevent resale of stolen parts, and yet is only applied to expensive makes; the article names BMW, Ford Performance Vehicles, Holden Special Vehicles, Mitsubishi Ralliant, Porsche, Subaru.

Or perhaps this is a situation where, neutrality or no, we may be revealing a cold truth of the auto industry.

--Mr kitehead 22:41, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Unless there's a clear increase in sales due to using microdot identification where's the incentive for manufacturers to use the technique? They've already been paid for the (now stolen) car so as far as they're concerned microdot identification is simply an added cost. Given the strained circumstances of many manufacturers it's entirely possible that they would be reluctant to adopt it. In a way it's similar to the safety scandals of the 1950s and 1960s where manufacturers were extremely slow to adopt a number of fairly inexpensive features that significantly enhanced the safety of passengers and drivers. Lisiate 20:41, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh and here's an ad for a similar product (albeit with fewer (100-200) dots with a retail price of NZ$99.95. - http://www.idmicrodot.co.nz/kits/bvehicle.php.

USD75 is a very large outlay for a high volume vehicle manufacturer. For example a 200,000 volume manufacturer would spend USD15 million applying this. Investigation shows this cost is entirely the cost of the dots, and the machinary to apply them, it does not include the cost for the operators of the machinary, or the knock on effect to a factory production line.

The effects of this product in reducing theft, or improving recovery is so far unproven. Critics of the system point to the fact that specialist equipment is required to read the dots, and this makes roadside reading impossible, thus reducing the effectiveness. - Mr Jones 16 July 2007