Ming Thein's blog article looks to me to be one of the most balanced and well-written pieces on this issue. Well worth reading.
God, Chris how I'd like to agree with you!
But:
" I really don’t see why it’s such a big deal in photography; we don’t beat our breasts and pull out our hair when our washing-machine manufacturer moves production or gets bought over."......Ming T.
That is 100% wrong!
We had a Zanussi washing machine for over fifteen years that did a perfect wash in about an hour. Then if failed and parts were not available. So I bought another Zanussi. It has screwed up my days, never mind my wash.
After much hunting, I discovered a Rapid Wash setting (on the
left side of the choices! - who'd look for enlightenment there?), which does the job in about 30mins but only accepts half the weight of wash. Worse, for a very hard water area, the softener tablet only dissolves about half of itself in that time (and never completely even on a full run), so not full protection for the pipes etc. So that's no good: better wash longer and protect the system from the hard water.
The normal wash, believe it or not, took three hours the last time I ran it, and as consequence, everything came out beyond crease-resistant nightmares: I have a whole new bunch of wrinkles to play with. Which in winter, as cold doesn't let my T-shirts show, is not too bad, but man you should see the mess it's made of curtains! A previous setting did the job in two hours, so I must try to figure out what that setting might have been - it's all about
combinations of settings: not only are there settings, but sub-settings to those. Digital camera makers have set one helluva bad precedent.
Zanussi Lindo 100, in case anybody knows - and can pass on - a magical setting that also runs a full load in an hour!
I simply don't trust the sytem enough to switch on, leave it running and go out to do whatever I have to do, and come home calmly expecting the job to be done and no floods or whatever waiting to greet me. So wash-day is a lost day. At my age, every day is an important one, even if they are generally all the same - in good periods.
No idea who owns the company, whether it's Chinese or Swedish or even, as I might be given to imagining, Italian money.
Now, is that flaw in Ming's argument enough to discredit his point of view?
;-)
Rob