Does country of assembly make a difference?

[raymond_lee8]

I bought 2 Kingston SD 512MB memory cards through BestBuy. I plan on just

keeping one and returning the other. I noticed that each one was assembled in a

different country. One was assembled in Japan and the other in Taiwan. Does

anyone know if there is a difference between the two in terms of one being of

better quality than the other? Does Japan still have a leading edge in terms of

producing superior quality electronics and components? Which one should I keep

and which one should I return? Thanks to anyone who can help.

[bobatkins]

I'm just surprised they weren't both assembled in China.

[phineas_tarbolde1]

Makes no difference in my opinion. If there IS a difference I think it is so marginal that it isn't really a factor. I say, given the low cost of a 512 card nowadays, it isn't even worth your time or the hassle to return it. Keep both and use the other as a backup.

 

My advice to keep your card running smoothly is to format it every once you fill the card and down load it to your computer.

[v.anisimov]

Statistically speaking and given the identical QC procrdures, variation within "made in X" is likely to be greater than variation between "made in X" and "made in Y"

[Ed_Ingold]

>Statistically speaking and given the identical QC procrdures, variation within "made in X" is likely to be greater than variation between "made in X" and "made in Y"

 

What basis do you have for this conclusion? Statistically speaking, the variance between two plants would be the sum (more or less) of the variance in plant and that between plants.

[v.anisimov]

I was thinking in terms of the likelihood of failure. Given similar QC procedures, a card assembled in Taiwan is probably as likely to fail as a card assembled in Japan.

 

Speaking of the variance between similar groups. There's more variance in body height within a large group of women, then between similarly large groups of men and women. Same with two factories of the same company.

[kelly_flanigan1]

With my 10 year old Pentium Pros, the memory is made in the UK, USA, Japan, Korea, and Tawian. The chips where probably made in a subset of these places, and soldered at these places. Almost all of this once expensive memory 7gigs + was from Ebay eons ago, some actually still in sealed IBM boxes. All of this stuff was once tested new by IBM, and I have never gotten a dud chip yet. <BR><BR>The only flakey memory I hav gotten recently was new 512meg chip from an office box store 2 years ago, and some ancient stuff for our 486 back in the early 1990's.