[SlickWillard]

My point was that people still do solder. Not on plug-and-play PC/VCR/cell phone, which are mass produced and can be tossed in the trash with impunity, but on more specialized boards.

Yes, and for an extremely specialized group of people, it may very well prove highly profitable. Obviously a free market will determine precisely the situations in which it makes sense to perform specialized soldering.

However, probably 99.99999999999999999999% of the time, you'll be bumping heads with sweatshop labor in Taiwan/Singapore/Thailand/Vietnam/Communist China, if not prison labor, or even industrial robots, in which case it's insane to try to compete - just yank the part and replace it with one that's equally worthless.

PS: Did you see The Dead Zone last night? I'd say more, but if you haven't seen it, I don't wanna give away the ending. [Hint: Years ago, there was a Hans Solo/Star Wars novel that dealt with the same subject.]

[BushCountry]

Bump:

Because I like to fix circuits the good ole' fashion way. Soldering, cutting copper runs, drilling eyelets, mounting studs, and replacing a whole sections of the pc board was fun! It is one of my skills that to my regret has faded in history.