Kakuri Japanese tools

on par with an Acer gaming machine.

They are worthy of being in the links page. 

I've had one or two of their tools - they are not on the level of higher quality tools but they are straight forward and they work. Not sure what equivalent we'd say in today's world, but let's say like some of ryobi's better cordless tools in the tool world now. 

I've never had an acer computer, but I have managed to make HP laptops last 7 years or so each go around, refurbed to start, with double the going ram and what used to be like Quad i7. I don't know the equivalent now as the last one I got a year and a half ago has some insane number of cores. If an acer could start up, I'd rock it. I don't game, so all of the things about heat, and frame rate bottlenecks wouldn't bother me. I like a PC that turns on, and then turns off. 

My last "gaming" PC was an intel celeron 300 overclocked to 450 before the days of bus locks, and I think I had an nvidia card and a glide card (not at the same time). After that, the day job eliminated anything like gaming. 

I do remember nvidia back then had graphics cards, but they weren't really worth having for a period of a couple of years when games were being optimized for glide. Who wants to play tomb raider?

I'm sure there's someone using a HP computer that old, but not me! if you physically touch them long, they will fall apart. Intolerant of kids spilling water or being dropped, but those things are excusable. 

Replaced the wife's PC with a lenovo laptop since they were using T61s at work and then moved to lenovo and then her laptop (which was significantly more expensive than the same spec HP!!) had a full on physical harddrive failure at less than 2 years old. 

that encouraged me to go to disposable PCs. the peripheral fragility of cheap laptops is solvable by using the keyboard and touch pad only when traveling. Even then, if the touchpad quits, you can take a USB mouse. Hauling a second keyboard around is a little more of a pain, but I've got one now that's 10 years old and the other is refurbed, so I guess technically 3 or 4. 

People can complain, but there are certain things about PCs that are better now. I bought an AMD233 when they first came out - it ran hot from the start and never as fast as claimed, and it wasn't cheap. House budget for PCs for wife and I, soft budget I guess, and self imposed- $100 per person per year. We are running below that in the longer term, but the mrs. is not a power user, and I am a power user only in time spent using a laptop - nothing I do is demanding. 

No dogs here, either. Sounds dumb, but my mother was a seldom user of her PC, but had a demanding little dog that would reach for the keyboard to get her attention and pull stuff off of it, sometimes breaking it. 

I made the acer comparison, maybe not apt. I have seen two PCs that never worked from the start. One acer from walmart or something 25 years ago, and a college roommate who got a PC from "tiger direct". It never worked, and they never felt like doing anything about it, and he wasn't real big on having a spine, so he just moved on. It not only didn't work right in windows or on boot, it never got to a windows screen in the first place, ever. 

The kakuri tools are not like that. Some of them are like a white westinghouse or "hamilton beach" or whatever coffee maker. Not much for frills, but if you're looking to make coffee, they will get coffee in your cup. I had, and maybe still have, a no frills chamfer block plane from kakuri. It's not nearly as nice as a hand fitted plane, but you will have chamfers with it and with not that much more effort than the hand fitted type and for a fifth of the cost.  The level of function is way better than anything you'll get walking into a walmart or ace hardware or whatever, and buying a cheap saw and block plane. Way better.