> I know that there are some experimenting going on with
> SMD in the hobbyist/amateur area, but the through hole
> is still the volume, not ? And, since the industry
> more or less has switched to SMD, I expect better
> prices on the through hole stuff...
>=20
> Any thoughts are welcome !
>=20

I can only speak for myself, but I started out doing through-hole, like
everybody  I was intimidated by SMD.  However, circumstances forced me
to go into SMD (I needed to do IrDA), and I will never go back.  SMD is
really not much harder to solder/bake than through-hole, and there are
many advantages:

-  Cheaper parts
-  *Way* more variety of parts
-  Smaller size/power
-  Not having to do drilling (potentially)
-  Coolness factor  :-)

The benefits far outweight the slight difficulty of soldering the parts.
I think the hobby community will *have* to move to SMD, because the
through-hole parts are going to eventually be obsolete, for the most
part.

Alex

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