RFC : Which electronics device vendors have the best and worst websites?

I'll rate TI as 'most improved' over the last 3 years. Still has a ways to go, but useful.

ST Micro - sucks

National - useable

Motorola derived:

ON Semi - about the same as the old Mot SPS - useable but with quirks.

Freescale - you better know what part you want before you even hit the site.

Xilinx - See Freescale, especially if you're looking for an appnote referenced in another document: e.g. Xapp[some number] - do a search and it won't turn up - you'll have to list all the app notes by device to find it.

Linear Tech - pretty good but suffers from the 'Xilinx' problem above.

Microchip. Slick, but sometimes too clever for it's own good.

Panasonic - too much javascript and flash - hard to find things

Vishay - just like the company - bloated and no-one knows what product should be listed where. Badly needs a x-ref back to the original companies (as that's what we often know the parts as).

AMP - not bad as connector companies go Molex : ditto

I'll leave the rest of the starting positions to others :)

Cheers

PeteS

Reply to
PeteS
Loading thread data ...

A few more

Philips : unresponsive javascript everywhere. Great content if you can wait for it.

Broadcom : You need an NDA before you can even find out what they make. Website (sans NDA login) reads more like a press release.

Coilcraft. Very easy to navigate. registration required for samples a separate matter.

Cooper-coiltronics (part of Bussman). Hard to find something based on loose parametrics. OK for standard products.

Murata : pretty easy to use. Sometimes difficult to find specialist parts. Menus don't match products very well.

Intel. We make Pentiums. Finding anything else (especially older stuff) is difficult.

Micron. An example of how it should be done, even though they use javascript extensively. Easy to use, good links.

General Semi. Looks like it was designed in 1990 and has yet to be updated.

Cheers

PeteS

Reply to
PeteS

Hello Pete,

Plus the wait for the stupid stock quote. I don't want to buy their stock anyhow. They do not seem to understand what packet latency is and how that affects their overseas customers. Or in some cases the customers they could have had. But I guess after them having auctioned off their semi biz this is all water under the bridge now.

This is actually a blessing because 90's style web sites are among the fastest. 80's style are even better. The best ever IMHO was Sabre when it was still strictly ASCII based. Today I find and book all flights online but it has never been as easy and fast as Sabre was able to do that.

BTW I don't quite agree with the TI site being "improved". It's worse than before, often goes down here in the west and I hate waiting for pictures like that kid in front of a big TV and all this non-essential fluff.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
Reply to
Joerg

I will confess to detesting the over-use of flash and javascript - slows everything down for no good purpose. If a vendor requires java, they don't get my business.

TI has improved, but I certainly agree they've reduced that impact with the fluff.

Cheers

PeteS

Reply to
PeteS

Don't get me started.

Some general notes:

(1) I can't speak for everybody, but as a techie, I'm not very intersted in seeing 1280 x 944 pictures of some cute female of indeterminate ethnicity smiling at a handful of your products. How's about you strike a deal with

formatting link
you won't put up front pages with 70% skin, and they won't diffuse any silicon wafers.

(2) We really could not care any less how your company is organized. If you're organized as "Sales", "mature products", "Neewer products", "old products", do NOT put up those as choices. We usually don't know and dion't care whether you consider the 2N6112 new, old, or mature. We just want to see the specsheet, availability, and prices.

(2.5) Similarly if your op-amp group is organized into twelve different sub-groups. WE DONT CARE. We just want to find an op-amp. Don't make us try to guess whether you consider a LF356 "MOS", "Bi-CMOS", "HIGH-SPEED", "LASER-TRIMMED", or "burnt-orange package".

(3) We should not have to drill more than 2 levels deep to find anything.

(4) We should be able to tell if we're making progress toward our goal. For instance, on the HP site, you can click for minutes or more and loop back to where you were, and never get down to the page you want.

(5) Please, please let us do a parametric search. And make it somewhat useful. So many parametric searches are self-contradictory and non-sensical. And maybe outsource some bodies in India to proofread the tables? Waaay too many op-amps are listed with offset currents in amps instead of picoamps.

(6) It's no longer 1985 when Internet Explorer took exponential time to render a table with more than 15 lines in it. At least give us the option of looking at 200 op-amps on one bleepin page.

(7) Don't be coy. Dont' make us drill down 6 levels, register at your site, view several flash animations, before you tell us you havent made any of this IC in the last 5 years, and we have to order 50,000 minimum and wait 16 weeks. (Maxim and a few others, take note).

(8) Try a really simple test. Try using Google to find something on your site. If Google is better at searching your site than your internal search feature, think what this means. (HP, and others, you know who you are).

(9) Tiny inscrutable icons are, inscrutable. Maybe you think it's cute to have a purple squiggle mean "only available in Cucamonga". The rest of us dont.

(10) If you've gone to the trouble to scan or otherwise put up a datasheet, splurge and use at least one square inch of screen space to put up a large button labeled in at least 18 point bold font "VIEW DATASHEET". Maybe come up with an industry standard for this, so we don't go crosseyed reading the whole bleepin page trying to find what to click on to see then dang thing.

Whew!

Reply to
Ancient_Hacker

I go to DigiKey first - they do a good parametric search. Then I take their link to the vendor's sight or just grab the datasheet.

Or, I do a Google search for the part designation plus 'pdf'.

Luhan

Reply to
Luhan

Once I find the part I want, I try Mouser and Jameco for the best price...

Luhan

Reply to
Luhan

Philips have sold their semi side.............

martin

Reply to
martin griffith

Hello Luhan,

That's what I also increasingly do. Digikey delivers datasheets faster than almost any of the manufacturer's site. The result? I mostly spec in what Digikey has in stock and the clients order the whole chebang right there at Digikey. After that it's up to the purchasing agents but by then the BOM will be almost cast in stone.

Hey, EU manufacturers, are you listening?

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
Reply to
Joerg

Well Said, just too add:

Get Sample now: Get Pricing now: Who Has Stock Now:

Even "Skype a human" Now:

martin

Reply to
martin griffith

I looked at the Clarks Shoes site the other night. Very artistic, but made me dizzy, and found it very difficult to find things. So confused I had to send a "grumpy old man" email to them. Received a polite reply to say they usually have positive feedback. Went to the Schuh site and found stuff very easily and bought there. cheers, Neil

Reply to
neil

Intersil is all Flash. I suppose they don't want to be bothered by customers.

And I really hate the sites that just give you a long list of pdf datasheets without a clue as to which one might be the thing you can use.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Well, Digikey does have an okay parametric search, except:

(1) Usually the monst important parameter to me, at least for transistors, the voltage rating, is the last box, always off screen to the right.

(2) Their "flavor" box is mostly misleading and contradicting. Example for transistors, the choices are like "NPN", "PNP", "NPN/PNP", "Audio NPN", "General purpose NPN", "NPN-plus-resistor", "Darlington NPN". Think of all the overlaps there.

(3) When doing a prototype I don't care about items that are either not in stock or quantity 1000 minimum. Likewise when specing for a production run, I don't care to see the high prices for quantity one. How's about an option to choose up fron which to surpress?

(4) I suspect few buyers care at first if the case style is gray TO-220 or dark gray TO-220. How about a simpler package list where we don't have to click on 17 items just to select the generic TO-220 style? Same with smd and to-92

Reply to
Ancient_Hacker

Which is a shame. Intersil was a true leader in low power - indeed at one time they _defined_ low power.

Although I started this thread from a comment by Joerg for fun, I fully intend to point my vendors at it (maybe others will !) to educate them into what we (who actually decide what gets designed in) want to see, and what we _dont_ want to see.

Cheers

PeteS

Reply to
PeteS

Whew, indeed. Let's hear it for George! Maybe some good employees read Usenet and will cut & paste that post into an email to their bosses. ...and it couldn't hurt to include Pete's posts as a guided tour.

The obvious question is "Isn't there a Design Review Board for these things?"

As far as I know, there is a massive void where there should be a Web page entitled "What to Do Before Paying Your Web Developer". Y'know--stuff like a W3C compliance check, having some customers actually try the site.... ...and you'd think they'd want to get the folks they are trying to SELL to involved earlier.

Reply to
JeffM

In message , dated Mon, 7 Aug 2006, martin griffith writes

You want the DESPAIR routine:

Data and Engineering Samples Price and Availability Information Request

--
OOO - Own Opinions Only. Try www.jmwa.demon.co.uk and www.isce.org.uk
2006 is YMMVI- Your mileage may vary immensely.

John Woodgate, J M Woodgate and Associates, Rayleigh, Essex UK
Reply to
John Woodgate

Yep - but you still (today I checked) hit a Philips site. Maybe the new owners will make it better (not holding my breath, though)

Cheers

PeteS

Reply to
PeteS

Perhaps a simple 'Engineers want information they can use, not pretty pictures of your latest $(product vision)' might help them.

Cheers

PeteS

Reply to
PeteS

That's a common problem, also with mfgs. They all seem to assume that we have those DVD player boxes with the wide screens.

True. Same as that "pick your market sector" nonsense that some semi mfgs place in front of the meat.

I do care, big time. If something isn't in stock I check with other distributors. If it ain't there either the red flag goes up. That is typically a sign of significant procurement troubles down the road and I don't want to leave that kind of aftertaste with the purchasing agents of my clients.

Once I ordered chips and they came in purple packages. Yech...

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
Reply to
Joerg

Maybe they should have just sold the website.......

martin

Reply to
martin griffith

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.