Some good points are being made. I should qualify my statement above as not meaning that I have something against Asian products as opposed to simply Chinese. I'd put most Japanese manufactured products on par with US made, Toyota and Honda for example well above any other. Just like in the western hemisphere there's a scale of where I'd like buy products from, US, Canada, Mexico, random central / south American country and at the bottom of the scale Cuba. In Asia my scale would be Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, China.

I'll probably still end up buying the 997 based on my experience with the company and high expectationson of them backing up the product when problems do come up.