I have a General Electric iron that is 46 years old... No steam, therefore no vent holes... I do a lot of fusible and it's great not to get any "bubbles" where vent holes are... It weights 5 # but that's ok with me; I need the exercise... It still has the black and white fabric cord that they use to put on irons and behind the sole plate it says "made in the USA"... but again, that was 46 years ago... I just had my DH put a new plug on it a few weeks ago after 46 years... It gets REALLY HOT and takes forever to cool down when it is unplugged, but that's no problem for me... I use it to iron my fabrics using spray starch and it does a wonderful job getting out all the wrinkles... Like a lot of you, I use cheap irons and they do the job just fine and when they die I'll have no regrets throwing them away..... I'll never have another Rowenta... I kept hearing on the sewing programs how wonderful they were so I just had to have one...expensive, but I thought I was worth it... Got another Rowenta at "Tuesday Morning" at a good price before I had any trouble with either of them... I was ironing clothes one day, heard a 'pop', turned around, and where the cord goes into the iron, it shot our electricity and caught fire.. caught my ironing board on fire... I sent it to a place in New York and TOLD THEM i WANTED another one and TOLD THEM WHAT HAPPENED... They called me back and said it could be fixed but I had to pay for it... I said no way because it was some kind of defect... of course they didn't care... I told the man to send it back to Europe or wherever it came from and to tell them to take it and cram it cross ways of their a-- ... the other one that I had already bought before that happened just did the same thing a few weeks ago but didn't catch fire... it popped, and started smoking where the cord goes into the iron {same place as the other}... this time I just threw it in the trash because I knew they wouldn't stand behind their product... there would had never been a 2nd. Rowenta if the first had caught fire before I bought the second... Just glad I was standing there both times when they did what they did or maybe I wouldn't have a house now..