This model has been around for a long time. I recall a job back in 1997 where I had to add code to permit a service person to enable a feature on a machine. All the machines shipped with the same hardware for the reason you said: manufacturing costs would be too high to make some with and some without.
I had never heard of this before so I asked if it wouldn't piss customers off to see that they were just paying for some guy to come in and enter a code and not to actually install anything physical. The answer was "it never has before." We'd been doing it for years by that point.
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This model has been around for a long time. I recall a job back in 1997 where I had to add code to permit a service person to enable a feature on a machine. All the machines shipped with the same hardware for the reason you said: manufacturing costs would be too high to make some with and some without.
I had never heard of this before so I asked if it wouldn't piss customers off to see that they were just paying for some guy to come in and enter a code and not to actually install anything physical. The answer was "it never has before." We'd been doing it for years by that point.