I respectfully disagree with your assements. I specifically said REMOVING KEY FEATURES is a not a cost reduction, it's a new lower level model. Changing a washer from nylon to steel while not desireable from the build quality standpoint you describe, is NOT REMOVING A KEY FEATURE of the car like going from automatic transmisson to manual transmission which is a MUCH BETTER analogy..
Secondly, the green button stop down manual thingy is NOT the same function as open aperture AE, this has been discussed over and over and over and the loss of AE on really nice PENTAX BRAND K/M lenses cant be justified with a dumb $5 part removal that causes major functional losses on these K/M lenses which are millions of PENTAX SLR systems components in the field.. This IS a screwjob (if pentax sticks to it) because to stop support of millions of fine lenses ( approx half of all they have made) of a key feature for a dirt cheap part ommision is just plain that, a screwjob...If the part was expensive or the K/M lenses were rare or the function lost was very minor that would be one thing but all of these things are simply not the case... JCO -----Original Message----- From: Gonz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 10:13 AM To: pentax-discuss@pdml.net Subject: Re: Camera engineering (was Re: Rename request) Yeah, they (american car companies) did that continuously in the 70's and 80's until quality got so bad that they had to reverse course, because foreign companies were eating their lunch with higher reliability cars. A typical savings was replacing a nylon washer (meant to isolate a metal/metal contact) like on brake line/body attachment points, with a steel (and cheaper) washer. Result: rust at the point of contact, ultimately resulting in a failing or deteriorating brake system. Lesson: companies will do pretty much anything to reduce manufacturing cost, even if it means reducing features. As long as the cost reduction benefits exceed the true market value of the feature they reduced or eliminated. True market value is the *perceived* value of the feature to the company going *forward*. The aperture sensor thing did not *completely* (note: this is typical netiquette if you want to emphasize a word, not all caps, which usually indicates shouting) cripple the lenses, you can still take pictures, and I do take some very good pics with my K/M lenses. The green button fix is not a perfect solution, but its not the "pentax screwed their customers" situation that is being argued here. rg J. C. O'Connell wrote: > Whats suprising about that? Its always better to > eliminate ANY unneeded cost, even a quarter in > a $30,000 car but that's about pure cost reduction while maintaining > or improving the design features and performance, not removing key > features or degrading performance, that's not cost reduction, that's > new lower level model.. jco > > -
