Vitaliy wrote:
> I think that a reputation of superior quality should be a byproduct of
> the way a company does things. I am strong believer in the theory that
> "quality is free". Shoddy work costs far more than doing things right
> the first time.

To a point.  After that point you are adding cost with less benefit in
return.  Everything is a tradeoff.  This is why good engineering matters.
Part of good engineering is deciding how good good enough is.

Take laptops for example.  They get bumped around and physically abused on a
regular basis.  Obviously some level of abuse needs to be designed for.  But
how much abuse tolerance are you willing to pay for?  Let's say you can get
a ordinary laptop with the features you want for $1000 and it's designed to
handle normal wear and tear and abuse.  Let's say you can drop it onto a
carpeted floor from desk height without permanent damage a few times.  How
much more would you be willing to spend and how much additional weight and
size would you tolerate to get a laptop that can withstand a fall onto a
concrete floor from the top of a cabinet.  Hey, it could happen, right?  A
fall out of a second floor window?  Accidentally getting run over by your
car in your driveway?  Left on the dashboard in a closed car in the Phoenix
sun all day in July?

All these things represent higher quality that could be designed for, but
they add cost and other attributes you won't like (size, weight).  If I
could offer you the same laptop but you were convinced it could take all the
abuse I mentioned, would you buy it for $1500 instead of the normal one for
$1000?  Probably yes, I'm guessing.  What if it were $3000, $10,000,
$50,000?  At some point it's just not worth it anymore.  That point is
different for everyone, but there's probably a bell curve like distribution.
Being way off the end of the bell curve with superior quality is not free.
The company that tries that won't make a profit on that product.

All I'm tring to point out, once again, is that everything is a tradeoff.
Blanket statements like yours above are rarely valid.  One person's shoddy
work is another's effective design for affordability.  Whether the tradeoffs
were made well can only be judged in the context of each particular case.


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