On Aug 20, 4:12 pm, "Leon" wrote:
Robert! You might be happy to know that I heard Consumer Reports is going
to put power tools, washing machines, and cam corders in the same test and
see how they all stack up against one another. LOL. I hear you!

Oh, great. Now they have have found out a way to take it to the next
level of silliness. I can't wait until we see the "router shootout"
and the "cordless drill showdown" articles. And while Consumer
Reports means well, they use tests that are designed around parameters
specified by their team of product testing engineers.

I am sure that they will have some tests that have merit; but still,
no more than some of the woodworking magazines.

I quit reading almost all tool reviews as they always end with trying
to soothe the feelings of the crappy product manufacturers. I can't
stand to read the reviews like these;

"If you want a tool that allows you to set it up to your own
specifications, this may be the tool for you". READ: This POS was so
screwed up when we pulled it out of the box we had to take a couple of
hours just to adjust it to usable standards so we could try to test
it.

or

"We found the manufacturer's instructions to be difficult to
understand, but a call to tech support helped us sort things out".
READ: A Chinese mathematician couldn't decipher the instructions, and
after a day of trying to figure them out, we called tech support.
Thankfully, one of our assistants spoke Kurdu, so he was able to get
us squared away with an hour and a half of long distance time.

or

"We were unable to test this product at this time due to a glitch in
the product which the manufacturer assures us has been addressed and
won't be a problem in the future. READ: Due to **** poor quality
control, we were shipped a machine with a cracked work surface and a
dead motor. We didn't see the crack until the next day since we
worked late into the night because we had so much trouble putting this
POS together. And we had no way to test the motor to know it was dead
until we had it mounted on the assembled machine with its mounts.

Come to think of it, Consumer Reports can't do much worse than the
woodworking magazines, could they?

I think Charlie is our man of choice for the job.

Amen. Come on, Charlie - git 'er done!

Robert