Comments on: Panasonic releases the world’s slowest, crappiest dishwasher

By: Taro

Taro — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:28:37 +0000

Dear Mr Wiseman,
I will ignore the fact that your comments about the loony Zune the iTouch are totally WAY off topic.
I am an iTouch owner (and I am typing this reply on my iTouch–it is PAINFUlLL to type on these tiny virtual keys). However the loony Zune is total garbage, and marketplace has correctly labeled the Zune total failure in terms nearly zero sales.

By: Hip M. Wise-man

Hip M. Wise-man — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:26:18 +0000

LoonyZune and iPod: Most people compare the Zuney to the iTouch, but after seeing how slim and surprisingly small and light it is, I consider it to be a rather unique basterdhybrid that combines qualities of both the Touch and the Nano. It’s very colorful and lovely screen is slightly smaller than the touch screen, but the player itself feels quite a bit smaller and lighter. It weighs about 2/3 as much, and is noticeably smaller in width and height, while being just a sneeze thicker.

By: Taro

Taro — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:39:27 +0000

Both my version-1 Zojirushi bread machine and a Hitachi bread machine (received as a gift) are “magical” in the way they demand to be feed their pre-mixed flour costing 180 billion yen per package. Even buying imported, higher gluten, bread flour didn’t help. The machines are so damn finicky I threw both out. Arrrg.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:08:40 +0000

Yes! Our Hitachi dishwasher takes 2 hours and even then, doesn’t get dishes clean.

The Zojirushi bread machine though is magical. And the rice cooker is very efficient…fuzzy logic!

By: Coligny

Coligny — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:23:49 +0000

Depends… some were quite evil… My mom in the 80s had a Royal Blue Station Wagon 2100 series Vaz Lada (company now property of… Renault…). The gearbox was so hard she needed booth hands to shift gears. Needless to say the car spent most of its life in first gear.

By: Taro

Taro — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:09:17 +0000

Now, now, Coligny, please don’t insult our Russian Comrades by equating “Soviet-era appliances” with the Japanese ones. The Soviets never meant to create suffering, but Japanese companies think it is Job One.

By: Coligny

Coligny — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:23:58 +0000

No, awful apply to Soviet-era appliance. The japanese one are hell bent on making your like miserable.
Air cooling deserve a chapter by itself… In Korea the speak have fancy display, choice of colors, give the time… In japan.. most of the time they seems to be exclusively designed to blow the fuse of the house main breaker… Then there’s also the vacuum cleaners, which are japan inc only product that actually doesn’t suck… And seems to have been made for doll houses only… X10/home automation is absolutely unknown there… But on the other side of the scale, Rice cookers have at lease 12 000 different operating modes. Even if the only one they need is “cook the fracking rice”. But the worst are the heaters insanity:
Modern oil heaters with CO alarm have to be ‘bipped’ every 3 hours, if not they shut down… So you’r extra safe, but can’t sleep
Old oil heaters than can kill you will run as long as they have fuel, which might be twice the time needed to effectively kill you.
Gaz heaters that can run indefinetly on city gaz, have CO alarm, but no keepalive is needed. Meaning that you gaz bill can go through the roof if you’r not careful.
Electric oil-bath heaters are… really good at blowing the main breaker too… But not that good at fighting against the pitifull state of home isolation.

By: ECM

ECM — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 02:20:15 +0000

Huh: it never even occurred to me that it was odd that there aren’t any Japanese appliances at, say, Best Buy or Sears, etc. but, now that I think about it, it is an odd omission (or at least it would have been if I didn’t now know they were, apparently, awful).

By: Cbass

Cbass — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:48:19 +0000

Japanese tech will make a lazier (and better) world….which it makes me glad, i’m all laziness when it comes to do the kitchen housework =_=

By: Coligny

Coligny — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:29:14 +0000

Dood, after my microwave set fire to some bread I was unfreezing yesterday… I think we can also add them to the list of turd sandwich from Japan Inc…