Pounds is used as a unit of weight in at least 2 civilized countries. (In Canada, people often give their weight in pounds and their height in feet and inches, and apparently frequently use Fahrenheit when cooking. Yes, it is a mess.)

Source for parenthetical comment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Canada

Edit: Worth noting that this double meaning of "pound" can be used for many jokes. For example, when people are talking about using weights, I could ask "why not spend the pounds rather than just losing them"?

Yeah, we tend to get done over on price and VAT. The dollar is relatively strong against the pound at the moment, so we also get done over a bit on exchange (plus general profiteering). I have to admit that I was a bit surprised when I was in Gurgaon on business c5 years ago that computer hardware didn't seem cheap.

Outside of Samsung and WD, I'd also look at Crucial, Seagate or Sabrent. I'm sure there are some other solid brands, but I've not done much research as I found decent branded ones at prices that worked for me.

As far as I'm concerned, using pounds to measure weight is the antithesis of civilized and if Canada isn't careful, it'll find itself in the barbarian club with Liberia, Myanmar and its southern neighbor: https://www.statista.com/chart/18300/countries-using-the-metric-or-the-imperial-system/

Thanks! Sabrent is new to me and its seems to be in the highest end of SSDs over here. I'll add them to my watchlist. The brand situation is very strange since we don't get some of the companies western countries get but we also seem to get shady-looking Chinese companies who are probably trying to break into the international market. This goes for other parts too, not just SSDs. Eg we never had EVGA but we always had Zotac for Nvidia GPUs and we only rarely have Biostar motherboards. Each company probably has markets / countries it prioritizes.

Dollar has surpassed the Euro vs the Rupee so its doing quite well I think. Unfortunately, PC hardware never tends to be cheaper in India unless its 2nd hand or grey market because some companies seem to import used stuff from other countries to sell here. Consoles are even worse and Nintendo doesn't even officially support India so the prices for anything Nintendo are laghably criable.

That doesn't make an entire country uncivilized. Yes, there are issues with the US, but it's still civilized, we have stable internet access, and we have modern technology and aren't in a state of civil war.

In fact, if I were to list the issues with the US, the choice of units for measurement wouldn't even appear on the list, as there's other issues that are more significant; the units of measurement are insignificant. Also, even here I note that nutrition facts, as displayed on food labels, use grams and other metric units (though the serving size does not). Furthermore, while food is typically sold in imperial units like fluid ounces, the packaging still typically shows the metric equivalent (usually not a round number).

20% VAT is pretty low as far as EU goes.

https://taxfoundation.org/value-added-tax-2022-vat-rates-in-europe/

Ouch - I hadn't realised they had gone up that much elsewhere in Europe. I remember when we had 17 1/2% in the UK (for years) which dropped to 15% to boost the economy after the financial crisis. Then, up to 20% and seems to be stuck there.

Yeah I know, that's why I was being sarcastic about it. I know that Myanmar and Liberia and (probably) Canada are civilized countries, that's the joke.
Wow this is news to me. I thought EU was more liberal on taxes and stuff. I always thought it were developing countries that charged high taxes. It seems its universally cool and trendy to rip-off people trying to buy stuff for work / recreation now. Every government wants advancement of the domestic IT sector but no government wants to make any of the tech required for it even half-way affordable.

Ah, well a company (or individual that has VAT registered) is buying for business use, then you can claim the VAT back once you are VAT registered. Obviously, the number of companies or people that can legitimately buy a gaming graphics card is pretty small (you would probably need to be self-employed as a video game reviewer or a game developer)

Then, if you use the stuff you bought for the business in a personal capacity, in the UK you instantly get a taxable benefit (up to 45% marginal tax rate on the value for personal use).

Basically, they'll tax you somehow.