ANyway.... a few comments of my own...
regarding the "efficiency," of a bali, and having to learn to open it... Well, it took me a while to ride a bicycle, too. And opening a bali is about as hard to forget as riding a bicycle.
Length of handles? Well, folders have longer handles, too... they have to be, or the blade won't be covered when the knife closes. And considering the amazing number of "ergonomic," handles that aren't, I'd have to say that the bali handles are pretty darned comfortable.
Throwing a knife... read any box on any knife, except for a throwing knife, and the box (or warranty card/ care instructions) will tell you "this knife is not designed or intended for throwing."
That being said, I'll concede both that my old endura held up pretty well after a lot of throws, and that all of my balis have twice the pin strength or more than my spydies, both due to pin thickness, and the fact that there are 2 pins, meaning the damage to pins from throwing is likely to be less severe. Damage to the locking mechanism will be even less. But I'm a bit less inclined to throw a $100 knife than I am a $40 knife. MAybe if I buy myself a cheetah...
I'm guessing that cheap balis have done mroe to damage the reputation of balis than cheap folders have to damage the rep of folding knives. It's easy to make a cheap lockback that will lock than it was to make a cheap bali whose press-together pins (which were used to cheaply assemble the imported knife parts) don't bend, rendering the locking loose at best. That said, a loose lock on a cheap folder is more dangerous to the user than a loose lockup on an open bali. The pin issue is somethign that I have a feeling will be soon solved with the screw-together pins that the cheetah will be using. Hopefully the design will spread to other imported knives.
Folders have their place, as I'm sure all of the bali owners will agree. I have many myself, and wouldn't trade them in. If forced to choose between my balis and my emersons, it would be a very close race. Even between my tachyon and my commander, or CQC-7...I don't think I could choose. But a knife, for just about anyone in any of these forums, is a knife... and a cheap knife will almost never really hold sway among any of us, be it a folder or a bali. Hopefully more balis will come along in the $50-100 quality range soon, bringing the race with standard folders a little closer. There's such a range of folders, from delicas to customs, that a good folding knife can be found within each $5 increment of price. Not so with balis. The BM 31 can be found for well under 100, if you know where to look, but it's still a pricey knife at standard retail cost. So usually the choice falls between that, and chinese folders for a medium priced butterfly knife... which needs to be worked on, and probably will be, soon. Otherwise I'll have to move to florida myself, and try to find a way to make bali manufacture an affordable enterprise.
