Dear electronics companies. I am willing to pay more money if you build your products in the US / Europe / Japan and actually do QA.
(Actually, I have nothing against making stuff in China. But it seems that people outsource to China only to save money, and you get what you pay for. In this case, your house nearly burning down because someone wanted to save a fraction of a penny on capacitors, or something.)
Example: I have a Soekris router instead of a random Netgear or Linksys. It cost $300 instead of $25 that a WRT-54G would cost, and it doesn't even have wireless. But, it actually works. The VPN works. The firewall works. It doesn't drop packets. It doesn't overheat. It doesn't burn down my house. Is this worth a 12x price premium? Yes.
"I am willing to pay more money if you build your products in the US / Europe / Japan"
No, you aren't. Well, you might be; I don't know what your means are, but you probably aren't.
Here's the problem: it's not just the extra 20% in cost of the product. Once you raise the product's price, fewer people will buy it. Hardware is a game of economies of scale. When you fall off the volume curve, the price goes up exponentially. Soon enough your 20% additional cost starts looking like 200% additional cost.
Furthermore, there are precious few companies doing high volume electronics manufacturing in the US. There's no guarantee that the quality you get is going to be any better than what you can find for less in China. That's not to say that you can't find something unbelievably crappy in China, but even good services in China cost much less than they do here in the US. It's not like you can buy better capacitors in here than you can in China. The ones you can get in China have the advantage of actually being available too, whereas buying even passives in the US can result in ridiculous lead times of 6 months or more.
Yes, you bought a Soekris router and you're very happy with it. I'm glad for you. It's also a completely different class of product. There's no lesson that can be drawn from the comparison between a Soekris board and a WRT54GL.
I am willing to pay more money if you build your products in the US / Europe / Japan and actually do QA.
Most people won't. I'm not sure I would. I don't inherently see anything wrong with buying goods made in China or Taiwan - there are plenty of companies (eg Apple) who manufacture high quality goods there.
US labor has massive issues too - I wouldn't want to own a car made in the US.
As for your router, my Chinese-made Buffalo does everything yours does (plus wifi and runs dd-WRT) and cost me $30. Your argument would only stand up if everything made in China was poorer quality to US made, and that isn't the case.
+1 for soekris (I have a 5501 sitting on the counter with me right now, one of 5 that I own [I use them as both VPN endpoints, and firewalls at work]).
I remember when I got my first one and had a problem with it. I literally just called the company and heard "Hello, Soekris engineering...oh, hold on, let me get one of the engineers for you."
Absolutely worth the money. Awesome in every single way (and they look badass too :-D).
(Actually, I have nothing against making stuff in China. But it seems that people outsource to China only to save money, and you get what you pay for. In this case, your house nearly burning down because someone wanted to save a fraction of a penny on capacitors, or something.)
Example: I have a Soekris router instead of a random Netgear or Linksys. It cost $300 instead of $25 that a WRT-54G would cost, and it doesn't even have wireless. But, it actually works. The VPN works. The firewall works. It doesn't drop packets. It doesn't overheat. It doesn't burn down my house. Is this worth a 12x price premium? Yes.