My intimate involvement with Asia design and manufacturing of Ethernet equipment produced lots of bumps in the road (less than stellar design and mfg QA).

Maybe this is also what Outlaw is experiencing.

The "Asia" labeled here more specifically refers to Taiwan, mainland China, Korea, Malaysia and not Japan.

[This message has been edited by bstan (edited October 10, 2002).]

Thank God the cars made in Japan did not follow the quality (or lack thereof) of our cars here in the U.S. I guess Japan is also in Asia.

Last year, I purchased a Kawasaki KLR650 motorcycle. After riding it about 3000 miles, things started falling off, and the shifter broke off (on the freeway, no less!) I bought it because it was an established design, and had received a stellar reputation.

When I took it back to the dealer to trade it in on something else, he told me that they had switched manufacturing of this model from Japan, to Bankok, Thailand as of my model year.

Goes to show 'ya!

Right now, good quality = Japan. And not so good quality = those other Asian countries. But wait! It wasn't long ago the term "cheap Japanese Imports" was everywhere, meaning cheap stuff, inferior quality. And just wait! It probably won't be long before Japanese-style high quality is associated with Taiwan, Korea, etc.

I agree. I think the other Asian companies are here to stay. Most people that want to get ahead have a great work ethic.


[This message has been edited by randyb (edited October 10, 2002).]

A lot of things are coming from China, and some of them are of extremely high quality (things contracted from American companies, for instance). It really depends I would think, on what quality level is demanded by the company contracting the work to Asia.

Japan's stock market is at a, are you sitting down, 19 year low. Hopefully that's not where the DJIA is heading.

My wife, who performed in Japan for quite a few years told me that Japanese workers are tending to just 'go through the motions' in their work, very uncharacteristic for them in the past.

Soundhound - China has many products that they are having difficulties with. For instance ASUS motherboards. The ones made in Tawain have very little problems with them. The ones being made in China are crap.

TPS

I was really talking about _my_ experience with some things made in China. A very high-end professional condenser microphone that gets used a lot is made there, and the workmanship is impressive. Some of their vacuum tubes though seem to have an identity problem: they think that they are fireworks, not vacuum tubes... I suppose it just takes diligence on the part of the person doing the contracting to demand quality.

Then, there is always the URAL motorcycle that is made in Russia - I'll just say that the workmanship is "interesting" !!