On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 02:57:26 +0000, Ernie Leimkuhler wrote:

November 4th 2004 Black and Decker finalized the purchase of the Pentair
Tools group.
This includes Porter Cable, Delta, Devilbis compressors and a few other
smaller companies.
Pentair sold their welding companies (Marquette, Century, and Solar) to
Lincoln Electric last year.

I am very worried about this.
B+D does not have a good track record of respecting quality construction.
The Dewalt brand was created because they has destroyed the market value
of the Black+Decker name by making so many crappy tools. Dewalt has gone
completely plastic now. Delta is mostly taiwanese junk now, but Porter
Cable makes some nice stuff and more importantly they own FLEX, maker of
the finest right angle grinders on earth.

That sort of makes Milwaukee look better & better...

Even when B&D was known for the real-cheapo they did make a professional
line of tools that was much better than the DeWalt stuff they've been
selling. My impression of most of the DeWalt tools is that they are
definitely built to a particular price point. There are a few that seem to
be built to a professional standard, regardless of price, but those are
the exceptions.

The older designs in the PC line have remained quality items, but some of
their newer designs tend more towards the B&D/DeWalt quality. Fortunately
we still have Milwaukee which is commited to producing quality
professional tools.

--
The instructions said to use Windows 98 or better, so I installed RedHat.

Yeah, but someone said Milwaukee was bought out by Ryobi... sigh
Face it people - Thanks to Wal-Mart, we are doomed to have nothing but
junk available to us, and no way of buying anything else. If you need
something good, you are gonna haveta make it yo'self.....
Ken.