At 11:36 AM -0500 1/24/97, Jeff King wrote:
>Craig:
>
>Thats a attitude that is quite common. Its also a reason for me not
>to deal with a company. Case in point... I had to spec a low end
>microcontroller for a project. Looked at a number of companies
>(Motorola being one). Motorola had almost exactly the attitude
>you mentioned... I just wanted a few samples to evaluate them..

It's purely a matter of economics.

Did you call Motorola directly, a rep or someone in distribution, like
Arrow, Pioneer, etc? Going direct, in my experience, will most certainly be
a dissappointment. However finding a hungry salesperson in distribution is
a great avenue to get things done. They have the ability to sample, tech
docs and most of the big distribution companies have internal "specialists
(FAE)" for parts, i.e. a comm person, a micro person, a power person, etc.
These people know their stuff and you can actually call them, go figure! If
they don't answers to your questions, they know exactly who to call.


>The only company that provided the support I wanted for my evaluation
>was MicroChip. They got my business and so far I have bought over
>$10,000 in product from them in 1996. Small potatoes, maybe... but
>as my company grows I won't forget the snub I got from Motorola.

I too chose Microchip because of a robust and knowledgable Microchip FE at
Embedded Systems show. There were other reasons surely, but he/MC knew how
to sell me on their companies strengths. Motorola wasn't impressive, they
didn't listen my needs as a developer. Motorola has supply problems anyway,
but man can they can a cellular phone.

craig