I won't retract what I said,
If you want a great fan buy one made in the good ol' US of A (i.e. PC Power & Cooling). There may be exceptions (although I don't know of any).
Well, I wasn't trying to start a bun fight with you by asking you to retract anything... I was merely just trying to ah, educate you by pointing out that the real world is a bit more complicated. You'd understand if you actually worked within the electronics supply/manufacturing industry.
For example, are you certain that the fan you like is in fact made in the USA? Hmmm... nothing on their site tells me that this is the case. But just suppose there is a sticker on it that says it is made in the USA. Well, what about the components? In fact, the content and labor requirements to qualify something as made in the USA are surprisingly complex and low. See http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/madeusa.htm for more information.
The reality of the situation is that almost no manufacturer is vertically integrated enough to make anything in-house these days.
It's really got nothing to do with "mass market" products. Niche products and the components in them are actually more likely to be sourced overseas because the low volumes make it prohibitively expensive to make them in-house. For example, the tooling required for just the fan-blade can easily run to US$20,000. You'd have to sell an awful lot of fans to justify this alone. And this isn't even counting the tooling cost of the connectors, PCB, etc.
Anyway, rather than pollute this thread with something off-topic, I'll stop now. Just email me if you'd like to know the dirty secrets of the electronics supply/manufacturing industry.
