>.  If you want to live in a backwater for electronic hardware development
>then accept that there is an increasing cost.

> 2. For IC samples: cultivate some friends in the USA with picture
> books of NZ sheep, yacht races and Queenstown mountains in
> return for samples as requested.
>
>
Apart from being.....wrong.......and insulting you have missed the
point.

Many suppliers are great(like Maxim, Dallas etc) the original
comment/complaint was that someone said National are a good
company to deal with... I have experiences to the contrary.
Parts are not expensive here... just sometimes hard to get from
some suppliers.

You are very misinformed if you think NZ is a hardware
development backwater. On a per capita basis, despite piss poor
gov policies there is some advanced work going on here.
Little old things like world leading inductive power transfer, world
leading flat motor designs, world leading automotive lead acid
battery deign, world leading ION implantation... yes you're PICs
(and all of Intel etc) are made with NZ ion implantation technology
the list could go on but I think I have said enough.
There are some people on the PICLIST from NZ who are leading in
their field as well.

_____________________________

Lance Allen
Technical Officer
Uni of Auckland
Psych Dept
New Zealand

www.psych.auckland.ac.nz

_____________________________