Jameco has notoriously been the worst for me. Its hardly worth searching for anything unless you happen to have the part number off an old order. I'm not sure what sort of search they implement, but it could use some serious revamping. The funny thing is that I have searched the Jameco site for a part, not found it, then searched Yahoo! with the same search, which turned up a Jameco link! Fishy! Needless to say, I almost exclusively use the menu system to find anything useful on Jameco. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Monday, July 12, 2004 10:38 AM Subject: Re: [OT:] jameco and other online suppliers > Don't you hate how everyone is going to online catalogs? > > Obviously it is cheaper for them, and if they have a small stock of items > where the names of things are well defined, it may work well. However, > this weekend I decided to order an item - called variously a battery snap, > a battery strap, a battery clip and other things, that plugs into a 9V > battery. Easy! But try as I might, I could not find a search term that > would bring any up at Jameco. Frustrated, I went to Digikey, also found > nothing, then to Mouser, where I found one. > > "This is fishy:" I thought, and went back to Jameco. Drilling down > through their menu system, I finally found the item uder "Bat Snap" and > "Bat Clip". Phooey. No mention of the word "Battery" or "9V" in the > title, and no consitency in nomenclature even in the same supplier. "Bat > Snap" Should have been in the Bat Cave, not in the electronics catalog. > This is not just a problem with Jameco it is a widespread disease. > > Text searches STINK as efficient ways to find stuff. If I had a paper > catalog, I would have thumbed through the index, which I can access at a > glance, found batteries, which would not have been abbreviated, and > thumbed a few pages until I found a PICTURE of what I wanted. The eye, > with a page in front of it, can access the equivalent of hundreds of > megabytes of info and sort through images at a glance in a way that is > completely impossible even with a very fast computer and a fat pipe. > > However, there is no browsing through pictures in an online catalog, it is > too slow. Most search engines produce 20 hits per page, and one has to > load page after of page of irrelevant hits to find their item. > > As more manufacturers switch to online catalogs, online datasheets, and so > on, my job as a specifier gets slower and slower. It is frustratingly > difficult to find anything if you don't know the name for it, not just any > name, but the name or abbreviation the supplier thought of that minute. > > Here is another example of an inefficient catalog. Square D used to have > a nice paper catalog, now replaced by a cumbersome internet based online > catalog. Square D is a huge electrical equipment supplier, and thier > equipment has frustratingly similar names. Most people would not know > that an "Insulated Case Circuit Breaker" and a "Molded Case Circuit > Breaker" would be orders of magnitude different in cost. The slightest > nuance in mis-stating the name of something could lead one to specify an > item that is thousands too expensive. I was looking in Square D for an > item that I still can't remember the proper name for, and realized there > is basically no way to find it if you don't have the magic word. Oh, and > Westinghouse and GE call the same item by a different name. > > Ever try Google Image Search? It is a good way to find clipart, > especially if you are not worried about copyright (i.e. not publishing > something or radically altering the image) however it searches for text > near an image, not for the actual content of the image itself. It > ludicrously finds all kinds of irrelevant images for any particular > search, because it can't really recognize images at all. Once again, text > based searches stink. There's gotta be a bettter way. > > > > -- Lawrence Lile > Electronic Solutions > Project Solutions Companies > www.projsolco.com > > -- > http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different > ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.