Slot loading just looks nicer, fits in with a nice media center ALOT better.
Anyways as for China they are actually one of the fastest growing economies in the world and they are a soon to be world power if something doesn't happen, a war or something, but if that happened our economy would go down to the tubes. Thats why we turn a blind eye to one of those supposed "evil communist" countries, It's very hypocritical but thats how governments work I guess.
Anyways Japan by far has all the cutting edge consumer electronics. Japan, China and India are over taking the US in the tech department. Every major techinical company outsources jobs to Asia where they can get things done VERY cheap. It's a shame, the US colleges are also passing through less and less electronics degrees every year. I live in Oregon and Intel supplies more jobs than any other company in the state other than the state itself of course. The main chip plant is an hour away from me. I't amazing it gets bigger and bigger with incredible clean rooms and such. I want to be an electrical engineer when I get to college and I hopefuly will get to intern at Intel next year. Hopefuly AMD's anti-trust lawsuit won't effect Intel to much. Anyways China bought IBM a few months ago and they are looking to buy more and more US technology companies. So soon alot of our companies will be owned by Asian countries. Unfourtanetely they have not said if they will be pulling IBM out of America and bringing it back to China where it's cheaper to work but most analysts believe thats what they are planning, so soon alot of our stuff WILL be designed by them. This trend is growing and is actually becoming a large problem. Japan is the richest country as in having the most money in federal reserves and we constantly loose jobs by having companies getting bought out and moved. I have friends that have actually lost jobs because of this. It's a shame, but money does rule supreme.
