The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
It means that they send it directly from someone else's warehouse. For example, you order a Canon camera from Dell, then Canon ships the camera from their warehouse instead of it being shipped from a Dell warehouse.
If you aren't a drop shipper yourself, why would you know about the term? It's a very business thing. I used to do a bit of drop shipping in high school. The profit margins have fallen greatly now. A drop-shipper won't tell you that s/he drop ships.
BTW What others are saying about the definition is right on.
Only in very rare situations do we ever drop ship anything and the reason behind it is that essentially the company you're buying from is placing their reputation in the hands of someone else... and distribution houses historically have issues and don't even really answer to their customers (which would be a smaller reseller). So, if you order something from someone who is drop shipping everything (all but nearly 5% of Asus dealers have never even seen an Asus computer that they sell.... let alone stock it).... but basically two reasons we don't is because we can guarantee the stock we physically have, and therefore can also ship it in within our normal short processing time.
Basically, with Asus, their "stock" has been so small over the last year that one minute they have some, the next they don't.... someone orders something from some of these big drop ship companies that claim to have them "in stock" and then they get a call a few days later saying it won't be in for weeks.... Meanwhile, we can keep our stock up to the second... The only thing that bothers us is that people still check to see if they stock we show is really the stock we have.... just goes to show you how many times people have been biten by the "in stock" drop shippers... But essentially, it's not a bad thing and it's one way to make things a bit cheaper. For us, the cost difference doesn't mean much because we have built a long term business and reputation that can support it.... Some of these places that have only been around a year or two can't really afford to house stock, let alone have to deal with overhead....
It's not good.. it's not bad... but I can't say it's in the middle either. It's different in situation to situation... Hope that helps shed some light a more specific situation.
Gautam I see you mention that your an audiophile. I was wondering if you've ever tried a bluetooth stereo adapter to stream music from your laptop to your home stereo and if so did you like it?
I've been researching notebooks a bit and came across the term a couple of times and an acquaintance of mine who works in IT mentioned the term a couple of times, with a slight negitive connotation.
Does this term apply also when I purchase from a out of state reseller say in N.Y. and I'm in California and in order to avoid CA Taxes the reseller has to ship the notebook to it's facility first and then he sends it to me in California? Also known as "Reversed Shipping"?
When you drop ships something lets say from asus disti in cali (reseller in NY) and the customer in cali sales tax applies in cali. So the reseller would not be able to drop ship in this case. We sometims drop ship notebooks that are not popular and we dont stock when it is possible to drop ship. Regardless of what anyone says every reseller drop ships a little, some or all of their products. There are quite a few asus resellers none of which you see on this forum that drop ship their entire store. Their whole inventory on their website is a direct feed from a disti like synnex. Even new egg does it but new egg stocks items in their 100,000 square feet warehouse as well. Their 1 warehouse in cali is bigger then most distis.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
