briand@tekig4.UUCP (Brian Diehm) (10/11/85)
OK, OK, OK. I'm now sorry I lipped off about the "terminally trendy" buying
unAmerican, and all that flag-waving.
HOWEVER.
One correspondent mentioned that Fuji started off bad, but has been getting
much better - in fact MORE LIKE KODAK!
And I respond - well, then, buy Kodak! It's an American product, it is about
the same price, it's still better or at least equal, so why buy foreign?
However, I may have been off the mark in attributing a perceived decrease in
processing quality to internal moves by Kodak to answer competition by selling
cheaper, whatever the consequences, and further that this is due to increased
foreign competition.
Probably not, but maybe so too. I guess I fear that yet another big American
company will fail to respond to foreign competition AT ALL (witness, or is it
witless, Detroit ca. 1965 - 1982 or so). Maybe I worry a lot.
Some have mentioned that Kodak is responding, and well, to the increased
interest in high-end B&W papers, and I say ABOUT TIME. Now that Oriental
has garnered a huge market share from Ilford, Agfa, and Kodak, it's about time
they see the handwriting on the wall. Had they seen it earlier, then the
market share lost (and probably permanently) would have been MUCH smaller.
Maybe.
Anyway, certainly Elite is a fine paper, and just maybe everything is just as
good as it possibly can be in this best of all possible worlds. But America
as a debtor nation happens SOMEWHERE, and one of the places that SOMEWHERE is
is whenever you, yes you, decide to buy foreign for an equivalent product.
The other place, of course, is that our large and small corporations have failed
not only in keeping the home market, but most certainly have lost the foreign
market.
-Brian Diehm
Tektronix, Inc. (Usual disclaimer)
"But I NEED my BMW!" - attrib to housewife in Duluth, one who never even HEARD
of performance driving!