Originally Posted by seely
Actually I'm going to have to disagree with you here a bit Tom. Its been my experience all front derailleurs are the same. They all are just a plain metal cage with a ramp, that just "mashes" the chain right or left. There really is no difference between a Deore/LX/XT/XTR front derailleur other than weight... operation is identical. So I see what you are saying about them shifting poorly but I don't think anyone could honestly notice a difference in shift quality between even a Deore and XTR front given that the mechanisms and construction are nearly identical, and how primitive the operation of a front derailleur is in the first place!
I think on a long term basis the action of pushing the chain across the bigger front chainrings is harder on the derailleur mechanism, so my feeling is that a better quality derailleur will work better longer. I agree that when the derailleurs are new or have reasonable mileage on them, the shift quality of various models does not vary significantly.