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Comment by inoop | Hacker News Reader

China beats your price by $0.95 and has free shipping :)

http://dx.com/p/arduino-pro-mini-microcontroller-circuit-boa...

Of course they do. That's how most of use get our breadboard wires, caps, resistors, ICs, etc... Everyone in the electronics community knows that sparkfun(and sites like adafruit) aren't the cheapest in the industry, but that's not why we buy from them. Heck even mouser or digikey beat them on most stuff.

I buy from sparkfun because: - They provide eagle files and data sheets for most things they carry - They provide real time customer support in IRC - They don't screw up orders or take 6 weeks to ship - They test, use, continuously improve, and deprecate their own stuff

I know it doesn't apply in this case, but go try to find board files, schematics, or datasheets for most of this stuff on dx. There's a reason sparkfun is so popular.

That and I don't want to wait a month to get my components. When I can wait, ebay it is.

A few months ago I bought a kit from Sparkfun to mess around with. Got everything built only to find out that something was wrong with the FTDI (I couldn't upload new sketches). After a quick e-mail exchange, Sparkfun sent out a whole new board.

For people who don't know much about hardware, that kind of customer service is invaluable. Without it, I could have spent days trying to figure out what was wrong, only to give up in frustration. Instead, I got quick confirmation that there was something wrong with the board and was immediately sent a replacement (at no extra cost).

There are some things that are worth spending money on. SparkFun is one of those things, they not only sell you things they provide information and product development that allows you to do awesome stuff. If you value the service they provide like making an easily navigable website and providing helpful links to compatible products and providing products that hobbyists use then you should support them

Hopefully you don't need it soon, that will take 4-6 weeks to get to you.

Last time I ordered a mini pro, a bluetooth bridge, and a couple of dht11's it took two weeks. I'm in Europe, and Sparkfun is not much faster for me. If I want something the next day I usually go for a local provider.

The great thing about dx is that they will ship a single $9 board to your house for free :)

dealextreme actually ships pretty quickly. I've ordered items from California and had them in my hand 5 days later, using their free shipping option.

Weird, I'm in MN, and all the stuff I've ordered has taken more than a month. They must put it on some slow trucks from the West Coast.

I'm in San Diego, CA and my experience is much like your own, close to a month on average.

Ordering from Deal Extreme is somewhat fun and interesting because of this though because by the time I receive an item I forgot I ordered it, so it is like an awesome surprise gift I sent in the mail to my future self.

Ever hear of "free samples"? How about $0.00 for the part and $0.00 for shipping.

So many chip manufacturers will send a few parts to whoever wants to order them.

Atmel sample store: https://secure.atmel.com/forms/secure/verifylogin.aspx?targe...

For students on a budget, or anyone interested in electronics, you should be ordering free samples.

May latest score is two ADXL362 chips, normally sell for ~$9 each in qty 1. I got them shipped express from asia, totally free.

I've gotten tons of microcontroller chips, small graphic LCDs (as well as the associated touch-screens), even a laptop touchpad, all types of LEDs, and many other components. My workbench would make most EE labs blush, and a lot of it was totally FREE, including shipping.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-New-Version-Pro... which beats yours by 28 cent. But if 95 cent is worth 4-8 weeks of lost time (shipping), great data sheets and reliability (hmmm...looks like this ATmega has been in a toaster before being in an Arduino), then you seriously need some financial tips :P

Hah, great find, thanks :)

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