I have no such prejudice against Chinese goods, as long as they are made well and have good quality control, but alas, most Chinese products are not made well and they fall apart in short order. Basically, cheap disposables./QUOTE]
Most chinese goods are cheap and not well made? So that's what 80 to 90% maybe? You should look closely at the origin of all of the products that you buy before making such a statement. Most electronic components have their origin in China and that includes controllers used in a varietyy of appliances, etc. I don't see huge numbers of failures. If you want an example look at electronic televisions. The television of today is so good that it put an entire industry out of business - the television repairman.
There is also the opposite effect. Some buyers will chose Minox's "Made in Germany" HGs over its "Made in Japan" HGs simply because Eurobins have more cachet.
If a company sourced its parts from 30 different companies, no way would they be able to maintain quality control or oversee QC in all those countries. So that's not even an option.
Have you looked carefully at where all the components large and small that go into the modern automobile originate?
I'm not sure what you are referring to about Swaro's "foreign parts," but according to our resident Swaro rep, Dale Forbes, the reason Swarovski refuses to move its manufacturing out of Austria is that the company adheres to ISO 9000 Standards and does not feel they could get the same quality products by outsourcing their manufacture. Perhaps you have some inside information that Dale does not or can't speak of.
The little I know about ISO 9000 leads me to believe it is a codification of TQM, QIP and all those other process improvement acronyms. I'm glad to read that Swarovski is focused on producing quality goods. I would be very surprised to find that all of the components for anything other than a very simple product were manufactured from scratch in one factory let alone in one country.
As I've written elsewhere, I don't think the porro prism binocular will ever become totally extinct because of their optical efficiency.
Porro prism binoculars still offer the greatest brightness and resolution for the buck, and there are some market segments such as amateur astronomy, and marine and military applications, where the porro prism binocular will continue to dominate.
Like camera film I don't think porro prism binoculars will become extinct any time soon, but usage will continue to gradually decline after an initial precipitous fall. If porro prism binoculars offered better functionality and value than their roof prism brothers I would have to assume that the hunters, birders and other binocular users would have voted with their pocketbooks a long time ago and roof prism bins would have remained a bit player. Something else has happened and I have to think that most binocular buyers are able to make choices based on performance and features. And not strictly on advertising hype.
As Holger asked at the end of his Meopta vs. EII review, Why pay for features you don’t really need? That’s why 90% of astronomy binoculars are porro prisms instead of roof prism binoculars. You don't need nitrogen purged bins down to 10 meters, because if it's raining, you're not going stargazing!
And certain chinese manufacturers are filling what is a relatively small niche for big objective inexpensive porro prism binoculars.
I continue to believe that the dominance of roofs is more one of fashion than of reason. If an optics company, particularly one that is already well established and recognized for its quality optics, be it Fuji, Nikon, Swarovski, or some other longtime player, would go out on a limb and produce a high quality porro that could match an alphas performance with ergonomics that aren't too bulky or heavy and come in at half the price or less of alphas, only snobs and fools would not considering buy them.
You apparently believe that the vast majority of binocular purchasers don't really think about their purchases. Apparently most birders, hunters and general purpose users are willing to spend considerable sums of money simply because a certain style of binocular is fashionable. Surely those Nikon, Zeiss, Pentax and Leica roof prism binoculars must deliver something beyond shape and a pretty logo.
