They are the cheapest, but they produce the worst quality. In most brand machines I see the part that breaks first is usually labeled by foxconn. Considering their use of chinese youth (slave) labor, this isn't good news.

I agree. I have seen so many of these boards fail for no apparent reason and with little use. Which is another reason I won't buy Apple, because guess who makes a lot of their stuff. Make it cheap, sell it above market value but make it shiny and hype it up and the lemmings will buy it.

Mind you, to give Foxconn some credit - they are slightly better than PC-Chips!

I have to agree about Foxconn motherboards - I've fallen for seemingly good deals a few times on these and they have mostly been unreliable. Same goes for their fans. I've seen some Foxconn nice cases though. I think Foxconn make a lot of Dell boards also.. and I don't their boards are any worse than average

But PC-Chips have been loads better these last few years than say 7 years ago when most of their boards were right old duffers.

I've worked with Motorola and Nokia in Foxconn, I've found them very good, sure they use more manual labour than is probably best, but their quality can be very good. Their facility in Shenzhen is incredible, last time I checked, there was almost quarter of a million workers on the one factory site.

Other manufacturers that are there:

Apple

Dell

HP

Sony

Nintendo

Sony Ericsson

Microsoft

Talk of slave labour is overblown. The "cheap labour" is not all that cheap locally, they pay ok, you get cheap university on the campus and very cheap accomodation. It's considered one of the best places to go to first when arriving in Shenzhen from the provinces as they train you up and then you move on to somewhere else.

Not to mention that western companies do reguarly audit them, i know Nokia has gone on random checks for ID and proof of age to check for workers under 16.

Which, considering I started (part time) work myself at 14 years old, is not too shabby