Very cheap PICmicros®

[Melanie]

Crownhill's prices are not bad if you want to buy small quantities. If you have a larger requirement then negotiate a better price.

You can always go to www.buy.microchip.com but by the time you factor-in the carriage, you'll probably find that Crownhill is still better on smalls.

Remember that your support of Crownhill also keeps this forum open - there may be cheaper vendors but what do they do to support you? This forum only exists because of their generosity.

[Luciano]

This forum is useful to us but also useful to Crownhill as
inexpensive way of advertisement. (No forum = fewer visitors to their URL).

Many thanks to Crownhill Associates Ltd for this forum!

Best regards,

Luciano

[Phil]

In the past, we only advertised on this forum in the section dedicated to buying/selling. The "featured" banner below the navigation menu is the first time that we have ever placed adverts on the forum as a whole.

The banner is told to only serve up products from the PICmicro categories, which eliminates the possibility of us advertising our own products, which everyone would agree isn't fair.

The adverts are not very intrusive, and as has been said, helps us to pay for the web-hosting, and staff time taken to maintain the forum, upgrade it, etc

Hopefully some people will also save some money by finding prices cheaper than RS/Farnell etc

[Melanie]

The question should be... "Does anyone know of a company that is more expensive than RS?"... There's a connector that we buy for 6p (and if we buy at that price then I'm sure RS do too)... listed in the RS catalogue for 83p... I wish I could mark-up products like that and get away with it!

[Luciano]

1937:
Radiospares founded in a lock-up garage in London by JH Waring
and PM Sebestyen.

2005:
RS is the leading global distributor of industrial products,
supplying over 300,000 products to 80 markets worldwide.

* * * *


Melanie, "300,000" it's a lot of room where to hide bargain
products like your 83 pence connector example.

Here is where the difference (83p-6p) goes:
http://production.investis.com/elect...financialdata/

83 pence is OK if you can order online one connector and receive it
the next day. (OK for prototyping or occasional repairs).

But now that you have the Channel Tunnel, isn't everything becoming
less expensive on your island? Do you still have this old British pound?


Best regards,

Luciano

[Melanie]

The Pound is good... for one it insulates the UK from financial decisions made by unknown unelected technicrats in Europe. Each country has a unique financial profile. To have decisions made in an office in the corner of the Bundesbank that equally affects two dozen completely different economies is crass stupidity. You cannot compare a farmer in Italy with one in Germany, or with one in Ireland. What might be good for one, hurts another. When I was in Italy last week, of all things, I found the Ferrari factory was still doing all their calculations in Lire and then converting to Euro's. National currencies are not dead... they're just hiding...

[Luciano]

The main reason why they still talk using the old local
currency is because they are unable to evaluate the prices
for goods and services in Euro.


In Germany it is easy because the 2 Deutschmarks are 1 Euro.
(1 Euro = 1,95583 Deutschmarks).
So when they hear a price in Euro they just multiply it by
two and use the resulting value to compare with what they used
to pay in Deutschmarks in the past for the same
goods or service. (Takes max. 1 sec. mentally).


In France it is a catastrofy. (1 Euro = 6,55957 Francs).
No way to convert that mentally. In France they are still
stuck with the conversion problem introduced by the
"nouveau Franc". In the early 1960's, they switched to
the "nouveau Franc"; one of those was worth 100 of
the old ones ("ancien francs").
(1 nouveau Franc = 100 ancien Francs).
Many people in their sixties are still counting and
making every day transactions in "ancien francs".
Now with the Euro..........


Italy (1 Euro = 1936,27 Lire).
Mentally Euro to Lire is add 3 zeros, multiply by 2
and remove 3%. This simple calculation is a problem for
90% of the Italian population.
(Try to convert mentally 57'330.15 Euro in Lire).

So next time you go to Maranello or Modena say your
prices in Euro and the discount in Lire. (Italians
still like all these zeros and think like millionaires).


Luciano

[NavMicroSystems]

First of all I would like to clarify that my initial post was not ment to be rude in any way.

It was just my surprise that prices on "the island" are not comparable to prices on the "continent"

The Pound is good... for one it insulates the UK from financial decisions made by unknown unelected technicrats in Europe. ...

Mel,

this is absolutely correct,
but (I feel) it also insulates the few european "NON EURO" countries
from european (or global) business
as one has to take the risk of changes in (one or more) exchange rates.
(at least for long term conracts)

(I don't like this kind of russian roulette)

Another thing that just pops to mind:

Have you ever tried to pay a bill (cash) in Kent with just scottish pounds in your pocket?

IMPOSSIBLE

(eventhough the exchange rate is 1:1)

That makes me feel they don't even have a common currency on the island

But the pound is good !

This is why people in Kent hire a van to go to France for shopping simple things like washing powder
(and wine of course)



And we don't need to talk about Ireland...

(Hit me if you feel you need to . . .)