To Firedome and Arbilab
Firedome:
http://www.speedqueen.com .. Everything you could ever want to know. They also have a facebook channel as well.
To Arbilab:
I've worked in the IT industry for close to 21 years, so I can sympathize with you.
> I was engineering integrity engineer for Dell,
I remember back in the early 2000's, a Chinese capacitor manufacturer stole a electrolyte formulation from a Japanese company, but they left out a very critical component of the formulation which would have stopped Hydrogen from building up in the capacitors.
This Chinese company underbid everyone and sold massive amounts of these defective capacitors to everyone. They were in EVERYTHING... but most noticeably, I saw them in Dell servers.
I have seen ENTIRE RACKS of Dell servers fail because of these bad capacitors. Dell basically told me to !@#$% off because I was a small time customer. I swore that the only Dell servers I'd ever buy from that point on would be corporate non-mission critical budget-critical machines. (ie. You get what you pay for. If the server blows up, who cares, just replace it.)
I think Dell learned a very expensive lesson from this.
> I'm still using a 1998 Dell, they were bulletproof and the service comprehensive.
The Dells my company uses now have been pretty rock solid for the most part. They're all late 2000's vintage (The oldest one being from 2006) and they've had absolutely remarkable uptime. Their service support on the other hand.... well, don't get me started.
> But in 2001 the MBAs got ahold of Dell and took the guts out.
That probably explains the switch to the lowest bidder when it came to the parts for their machines and probably the outsourcing too. I don't have anything against Indians, but outsourcing has cost them a lot more than they realize.
>Now they're the WCI of computers and service consists mostly of "accidentally"
>hanging up on customers so they'll give up and go away.
... and that's assuming that you don't manage to actually speak with someone with an extremely heavy Punjabi accident who barely understands the issue. I think outsourcing their customer service was one of the worst business decisions they ever made.. but I'm glad to hear they reversed their stand on it.
> install nets around their buildings to keep employees from comitting suicide off
I read about that. The sad part is, even if Dell knew to take very strict measures with Foxconn and say things like, "No employee works more than 8 hours a day", etc, etc... The factory owners and managers will find ways around that.. They will fudge the timeclocks, etc.. When the ethics don't exist, no amount of honesty can be forced upon people.
> where employees have set fire to the plant. Three times.
Wow. They must really hate their jobs to do that. At least in Mexico, they can unionize. I think it is certainly sad that Unions haven't stood up for these people. It's a huge political battle too. They still don't have rules there which protect Unions... at least, not yet.
> Dell asks Foxconn "did you test it, does it work?" and Foxconn says "sure it
> does".
Heh.. "We sold it to you and the customer didn't return it. Isn't that enough?"
> What were we saying about ethics?
You drive home some very good points. I only wonder what it would take to put a complete and total stop to this. Legislation? Huge import tariffs?
(I did once think about buying the Imperial set, but the washer sells for $2700 here. Strangely enough, the dryer is only $100 more. I didn't really see the advantage of spending the extra $900 to get stainless steel over white cabinets.) 
