China is not mainly poor, it just has a different economy of scale.
The people who own computers are people who have a basic education and anyone who has an interest in spending their money on one. Some of the contractors I dealt with (6 weeks ago) who were making less than 800RMB / month had new systems at home. The deal is, they buy P133's with 64MB of memory, 15" monitors, and 10GB hard drives, preload them with pirated Windows Jio Ba (98) and off they go. The price? Less than one month's salary. Oh, and that salary? don't forget, they get all their meals paid for, an apartment provided (usually shared and tight quarters), medical coverage all for FREE.
Nothing is shipped out of China then back in. The import / export regulations are so strict that in many cases that would never happen. For example, Fluke has a joint venture in China with a company called UTS. UTS makes Fluke meters and sells them in China, but also exports them around the world. UTS then takes the same internals, same casing, changes the colour and puts a UTS label on it and sells it for consumption within China at prices that people locally can afford.
Chinese people are shrewd business people. Make no mistake, they know very well how to cut costs, negotiate deals and then how to re-negotiate deals to suit their interests better after the deal has been struck. No deal is done until the project / purchase is finished and everyone has walked away.
Where are all the virii coming from? I can tell you that too. All staff of a white collar (educated) stature believe that they should spend 50% of their time studying while at work. With this in mind, all IT staff believe that they are programmers. When you have 50% of your time spent doing what you want, and you are a programmer with no direction, it's no surprise that the virii are being generated. There is no centralized point of attack or organization of the government, they are just plain and simply bored but expect that this is part of their rights.
The Chinese system of government is so decentralized it's not funny. Yes, there are big heads in the middle of Beijing thinking up global strategies, but you have to wonder why every province seems to have it's own system of government and rules.
I hate to burst your bubble, but I can guarantee that anything that is made in China especially for internal consumption is much worse than what you would believe half-assed to be in North America. My recollection of being there is that it's one great big dollar store, everything is very cheaply made and falls apart very quickly.
Wow, another spiffy announcment from the Happy News. After living there for 18 months, you realize that not only is there no real content, but that it's random propoganda for foreigners.
Speed of a 486? Not bad. The local people at the joint venture I worked at were buying brand new top of the line Pentium 90's with 14" monitors. It didn't matter anyways, all the computers deployed in the offices were just $2000 pillows for everyone busy sleeping all day.
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China is not mainly poor, it just has a different economy of scale. The people who own computers are people who have a basic education and anyone who has an interest in spending their money on one. Some of the contractors I dealt with (6 weeks ago) who were making less than 800RMB / month had new systems at home. The deal is, they buy P133's with 64MB of memory, 15" monitors, and 10GB hard drives, preload them with pirated Windows Jio Ba (98) and off they go. The price? Less than one month's salary. Oh, and that salary? don't forget, they get all their meals paid for, an apartment provided (usually shared and tight quarters), medical coverage all for FREE. Nothing is shipped out of China then back in. The import / export regulations are so strict that in many cases that would never happen. For example, Fluke has a joint venture in China with a company called UTS. UTS makes Fluke meters and sells them in China, but also exports them around the world. UTS then takes the same internals, same casing, changes the colour and puts a UTS label on it and sells it for consumption within China at prices that people locally can afford. Chinese people are shrewd business people. Make no mistake, they know very well how to cut costs, negotiate deals and then how to re-negotiate deals to suit their interests better after the deal has been struck. No deal is done until the project / purchase is finished and everyone has walked away. Where are all the virii coming from? I can tell you that too. All staff of a white collar (educated) stature believe that they should spend 50% of their time studying while at work. With this in mind, all IT staff believe that they are programmers. When you have 50% of your time spent doing what you want, and you are a programmer with no direction, it's no surprise that the virii are being generated. There is no centralized point of attack or organization of the government, they are just plain and simply bored but expect that this is part of their rights. The Chinese system of government is so decentralized it's not funny. Yes, there are big heads in the middle of Beijing thinking up global strategies, but you have to wonder why every province seems to have it's own system of government and rules.
I hate to burst your bubble, but I can guarantee that anything that is made in China especially for internal consumption is much worse than what you would believe half-assed to be in North America. My recollection of being there is that it's one great big dollar store, everything is very cheaply made and falls apart very quickly.
Wow, another spiffy announcment from the Happy News. After living there for 18 months, you realize that not only is there no real content, but that it's random propoganda for foreigners.
Speed of a 486? Not bad. The local people at the joint venture I worked at were buying brand new top of the line Pentium 90's with 14" monitors. It didn't matter anyways, all the computers deployed in the offices were just $2000 pillows for everyone busy sleeping all day.