no more Digikey catalogs

My experience is that ANY file over 5Megs is subject to being trashed due to line noise; 10 hours is a guaranteed impossibility. And my POTS provider (dear, beloved QUEST) swears my line is up to their required quality "audio". If you want better, then pay another $39 (or more) for DSL and the audio quality (modem speed capability) will go up.

I was done before the thread started..by not trying that impossibility.

I've managed it in years past -- up until two years ago my mother was still on dial-up, and Windows updates would sometimes be >100MB! (...since it was only when I'd visit a few times per year that I'd go tell Windows to fetch them...) But I certainly don't question your case either -- dial-up is pretty finicky for many people, it esems.

I think DSL is also better in that the entire premise was, "we're gong to take these crappy-quality transmission lines and still try to get high-speed data through them," so it's more robust than many (POTS) modems when it comes to drop-outs and other impairments.

You *might* be able to do better with a different modem -- some are definitely better at trying to keep the connect up in marginal conditions than others... but of course you can't control the modem at the other end of the line.

I remember seeing a Telebit Netblazer, I think it was, modem back in 1994 and being in awe how, in one little box, you could plug in the phone line on one side and Ethernet on the other, and have a relatively seamless Internet connection across an entire network at some blazing (ha, ha) couple of kilobytes per second! :-)

---Joel

Not only that but now most of the folk still on basic rate POTS have now been multiplexed onto a single stream which tends to screw up 56k modem technology that relies on a direct link from the exchange.

He would almost certainly be better off forcing a V34+ connection with maximum compression if he can only download to take these crappy-quality transmission lines and still try to get

Given how it works and the frequencies used on antique copper cables it is quite a trick to get so much data down a wire. Not so long ago they were still flogging 64k leased lines for an arm and two legs.

ADSL is even more impressive when you consider just how many other pairs in the same bundle have similar high frequency signals on them.

For superstitious reasons he won't use an internal PC modem which would protect him from the most common forms of data overruns.

Regards, Martin Brown

You are not kidding! It is a SERIOUS problem. Back about March, we had FOUR wrong items or shortages in one WEEK! I still don't know if it was massive carelessness or somebody stealing stuff. They are good about taking care of it, but it was a MAJOR pain to deal with that many errors, and having to count every part.

Jon

All the "He could easily get it with this version of Windows and that modem if he upgraded to X client, installed Y service pack and a different POTS" is well and good, but the .PDF you get is simply not as good.

I can pop open the catalog and browse, find things, plus discover other possibilities I hadn't considered faster than I can boot my computer. You can't flip pages in a .PDF, nor grab a couple finger- fulls to zip faster to your destination.

It'd be nice if they'd send catalogs to people who asked.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

I can't comment on Digikeys offering, but I haven't used a paper copy of RS or Farnells catalogue for several years now. Initially I had the CDs but these days with fast broadband even that isn't worthwhile. Online you can check for immediate availability, stock levels, second sourcing, order parts and grab any datasheets as needed.

"John" offering to help you is marginally distracting at times (a bit like the Mickeysoft paperclip only he goes away if you say "no thanks").

The only thing I dislike is that their parametric search does not allow me to type in conditional expressions to find components with for example (power>2W) and (diameter computer. You can't flip pages in a .PDF, nor grab a couple finger-

Too much additional production cost for paper catalogues for no gain.

Increasingly you now see corporate sites done with Flash that would take half and hour or so loading if you only had a dialup modem.

Regards, Martin Brown

So... print it out? Don Lancaster can tell you how to get your laser printing cost to under a penny per sheet or somesuch... $14 later you've got a printed copy? (~2800 pages, printed double-sided*)

I agree it's not quite as nice in that regard, although at least here there's almost always a PC powered on anyway... and the vertical scrollbar lets you perform the equivalent of grabbing those fingerfulls of pages.

You're probably aware that Amazon is now selling more eBooks than printed books. Amazing!

---Joel

• Speaking of sheets vs. pages... I had one professor in college who let you have something like "one cheat *page*" for the first exam, two for the second, and three for the final. I.e., for the first exam you could only fill out one side of one sheet of paper! Although he tried hard to make this clear, some people always seem to miss the distinction between "sheet" and "page."

It's a mixed bag to be sure.

Up-thread I commented that DigiKey's search doesn't always give the best parts, or even all the parts in their inventory. Since then, it happened to me again.

I'd spent hours on DK looking for prospects and evaluating the candidates its parametric search identified. Great. But the best part BY FAR, was something they stock, but which doesn't appear in their search results. (I found it by checking a vendor's site.)

They'd only have to produce a small fraction, and not as often.

I mostly ignore those sites. If there's bloatware on the doorstep, it's usually a waste going inside.

Cheers, James Arthur

rinting

nted

Printing it out makes no sense either. It'd be nice if they kept printing some for people who want them.

I wouldn't request the printed version--I try hard not to waste paper-- but I understand Robert's position.

re's

ou

Scrollbars aren't anywhere close. I can grab approximately the right number of pages and go right where I want in a couple iterations.

And, .PDFs don't display instantly. e-books are getting a lot closer. 500mS per page is a BIG pain if you're trying to flip through a kilopage or two.

Neat, and sad at the same time. Sad in that when you drop your e-book or the battery dies, you lose everything you ever read! Neat, in that you can carry 2,000 searchable books, mark 'em up to your heart's content, and they never fade or feed silverfish.

I've got some books over a century old. The clarity and direct, concise descriptions, the lack of ornamentation--these are things we need to revisit.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Well, would you pay a buck or two shipping and handling? Make them an offer, you never know - they are in the business of selling stuff, right?

Cheers! Rich

I'm pretty sure that e-books purchased from Amazon are persistent, so that if a Kindle dies / gets stolen / is run over by yer mother-in-law, it's possible to transfer the material to a new Kindle.

Less sure (but it may be possible) to recover other material that one has sent to their Kindle via Amazon's conversion service. Material loaded via USB, not so much.

As a side effect, Amazon can remove material at their discretion (see )

The gap between "is in catalog" and "is in stock" had been growing wider and wider for Digikey.

I realize that for a catalog house, putting it in the catalog is a big and important step. But as the catalogs got thicker and thicker, the chances that something unique was in stock got smaller and smaller (not that absolute stock was shrinking, just that the catalogs were growing).

Back in the 90's when the semiconductor market was at least a little bit more stable you could be pretty sure that if Digikey listed it in their catalog, they had stock of it. (OK, Maxim excluded). In this respect Digikey was better than most of the other catalog houses. But things are much more fluid the past few years, with entire product lines getting EOL'ed the month after Digikey publishes a paper catalog, and other things they never had stock on.

With the web, this is all a non-issue. I know right away if Digikey or Mouser or Allied or Newark can get it on my doorstep the next day. If I can't get it tomorrow, then I may as well treat it as unobtanium, I got better things to do than wait around for stock that may or may not eventually arrive (if the part even exists at all!)

Tim.

I don't know about the Kindle (I suspect you're right) but B$N's Nook works that way. SWMBO started out with a Nook and I got her one of the new Color Nooks for Christmas. It automatically loaded all her books off the WiFi connection. If she goes back to the old Nook, they're all there too. Even books she's purchased since.

Bad, but I don't see they had much of a choice.

dial-up=20

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Just about CD size. Much cheaper to make and snail mail. Heck, fluff it up and go for DVD size 4 GB. Include a copy of any free SQL database and give it real search capabilities. Prices and availability online only to keep people from trying to abuse 10 year old catalog pdfs (for the prices and availability).

(...)

Meh. Purchased apps disappear all the time on the iPod. Think of it as a temporary rental, not a purchase.

--Winston

Or fraud.

A rental contract would have a time clause.

Indeed.