On Tue, 2 Aug 2016 15:03:38 -0000 (UTC), John McCoy
wrote:

notbob wrote in
:

On 2016-08-01, John McCoy wrote:

I strongly suspect this reflects more of a decline
in review quality and rigor than it does any great improvement
in the product.

I surprised to hear you say this. I thought you were one of the smart
one's.

Guess not :-)

That statement is based on my recent re-reading of a stack
of American Woodworker magazines from the 90's. Compared
to reviews in current FWW or Wood magazine, the older ones
are more comprehensive (include a fuller set of the available
tools), more detailed (test a greater variety of tool features,
test features in more depth), and much more likely to criticize
aspects of the tool.

From that I conclude the quality and rigor of the reviews has
declined. I suspect there's a certain amount of "don't offend
the advertisers" at work.

China is gaining in manufacturing prowess. I figure they are
currently about where the USA was in the mid-fifties/early-sixties and
they are only gonna get better.

I have worked with the Chinese for quite a while. In my
opinion, the quality you get from the Chinese is the quality
you ask for - they are capable of very high quality work,
but you have to ask for it, be willing to pay for it, and
willing to test and monitor to ensure you're getting it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
*That* is the key. You really need someone at the factory to
continuously monitor production, though.

There's an old engineering saying: "good, fast, and cheap;
you can pick any two". The default from China is fast
and cheap. That's what most people want.

Good point. That's what China Inc. wants to supply, too.