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Other => Reviews and recommendations => Topic started by: Geek-9pm on December 30, 2016, 08:14:42 PM

Title: Electronic Component Catalogs. A review.
Post by: Geek-9pm on December 30, 2016, 08:14:42 PM
Over the years I have ordered small parts from different vendors.While in South America I ordered from Jameco and Allelectrons.I recommend both.

Here are some of the best consumer friendly parts vendors online
Some have PDF catalogs you can save. Others only have the catalog on line.

http://www.allelectronics.com/mas_assets/theme/allelectronics/pdf/CAT416.pdf
Limited selection, but great prices on overstock items.

www.digikey.com
Digi-Key  has a huge selection. Don't try to download every thing.

www.frys.com
Fry's electronics has large on-line catalog.

www.Jameco.com
Jameco - very nice catalog. Soon they will update the PDF.

I have never ordered from www.Maplin.co.uk in the UK.
Maybe somebody here knows about them.

If you order parts from vendors on eBay, you take your chances. My recommendation is to order parts from major vendors listed above.  :)
Comments welcome.
Title: Re: Electronic Component Catalogs. A review.
Post by: DaveLembke on December 31, 2016, 06:15:00 AM
Quote
While in South America I ordered from Jameco and Allelectrons.

Never knew you lived in South America.  :)

I live in North America, USA

I buy primarily from Newegg and Amazon, but if I need specific components such as capacitors to replace blown capacitors and repair a motherboard, I go with www.mouser.com . If I want to save money on a engineering project, such as I needed serial relay controls and it was so much cheaper to buy a board through them than it was to make my own.  I will buy boards through Marlin P Jones http://www.mpja.com/

I use to buy through Tiger Direct when at my last IT job I had a corporate account and could call my sales rep Mike up, always dealing with the same guy in the USA who was fun to chat with, and it was as simple as saying I need this list of items he said no problem and they were delivered with a net 30 commercial account with them either overnight or in a few days depending on when I needed them. I bought refurb computers through them for $98 per refurb in lots of 20 computers at a time ( Discounted because buying in volume from $109 to $98 = $11 off per computer around 10% discount ) for HP Business Class computers that were a bargain at less than the cost that buying Windows XP Pro and in addition to getting everyone onto XP Pro cheaply it also was pretty much a free hardware upgrade at that price. I replaced the mix of the 486's, Pentium I, II and III computers that were slow and got rid of the OS mix of NT4 SP6 & Windows 2000 Pro SP4, and XP Pro SP2 to where all computers were finally XP Pro SP2. Employees who were forced to work with lagged out computers for so long were so excited to be able to do their work and not have to wait for each page to load so slowly. One guy in the basement of the food store reminded me of Milton Waddams of Office Space in how they had him working in a corner of the basement away from everyone else with a decrepit 486 computer that barely ran NT4 SP6. When I got hired there, I saw what they had going on with a mix of dinosaurs and asked what the budget was. Finding out that the budget was so small for a non profit coop food store, I found this computer upgrade solution that worked out to replace 60 computers at the cost of 10 new computers. Bought them all in stacks of 20 on pallets. Because they all were the same model and hardware I was able to build one computer to how we needed them and then use RIS to build the others up and push them out to the users. The Pentium 4 2.8Ghz computers were not top of the line computers in speed back in 2007 but lightning fast compared to the 486, Pentium 1,2,3 systems they had been forced to work with prior.

Newegg with the free shipping is what made me switch from Tiger Direct to Newegg. These days though looking at them both, they are now pretty much the same. My first purchase through newegg was this Motherboard/CPU bundle for $72 back in 2009 http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138178  . That motherboard is still running today, but the Sempron x2 2200 was upgraded when i got a Athlon II x4 620 for free. The Sempron x2 2200 wasnt a bad processor and ran Need For Speed Carbon and World of Warcraft so much better than the Pentium 4 HT 3Ghz. It was my first true Dual-Core system as for I was running a Pentium 4 HT 3Ghz prior to this with hyperthreading that acted like an additional core but wasnt quite an extra core. I mailed the Sempron x2 2200 to a college friend who moved to Kentucky and didnt have much money and we got talking and he got a Socket AM2 motherboard and ordered a $4 single-core socket AM2 CPU for it. I shipped him my Sempron X2 2200 for free and told him to use that $4 CPU to get it running and then flash the BIOS of his board so it will support the Dual-Cores and then upgrade to the Sempron X2 2200 and he did that and he is still using that CPU today for himself and his family with dual-boot XP Pro & Linux Mint on it.

 I also use to buy computer parts/motherboards etc through the original Geeks.com site which went out of business. It looks like they are back in business but different ownership now. I liked that the original geeks store years ago would have clearance parts. Buy a brand new unknown brand motherboard for $15 and a CPU for $10 etc in which you could buy such as the Socket 939 motherboard and a Athlon 64 3200+ and for the fact that I had all other parts available already was able to build up a computer for $25 + parts I already had laying around that I got most likely for free or very cheaply. This computer ended up going to my brothers girlfriend who needed a computer and wanted to play Diablo II and didnt have any money. I messed around with the system and didnt like that it had a issue with my KVM. When switching to a different computer the onboard video would shut off. You KVM back and the video was gone. As long as KVM wasnt used the system ran fine. So I gave it to her because she wouldnt be like me running multiple computers at the same time. It appeared to be a bug with the unknown brand $15 motherboard.
Title: Re: Electronic Component Catalogs. A review.
Post by: Salmon Trout on December 31, 2016, 06:17:39 AM
I have never ordered from www.Maplin.co.uk in the UK.
Maybe somebody here knows about them.
They have a web presence and also bricks-and-mortar stores in the UK (over 200). There is one 50 yards from my workplace. I tend to watch for special offers, as they are often more expensive for the same items than some other physical stores and web vendors. Their own brand NiMH hybrid rechargeable batteries are good value. I bought a Seagate NAS and a 24 inch monitor from them they were on offer. On the web I would probably prefer Amazon. Maplin's web prices are often lower than the in-store prices, I don't know if they ship outside the UK, or if they did, whether the postage and customs charges would rule them out.




Title: Re: Electronic Component Catalogs. A review.
Post by: soybean on January 27, 2017, 11:03:42 AM
I think MicroCenter is another one worth mentioning here.  http://www.microcenter.com/   They have 26 stores nationwide, including one I've visited in Columbus, OH, and, of course, they sell all their products online, too.
Title: Re: Electronic Component Catalogs. A review.
Post by: patio on January 27, 2017, 11:15:22 AM
+2 for MicroCenter.....great Customer service...onsite repair center...and knowledgeable Staff.

I have cut my online purchases by over 1/3 last year as they are local...and many times will match an online price for me...