>Guess for those of us in the states, we are really quite lucky
>to have multiple sources for parts...

Yeah, well in the UK we also have multiple vendors, Farnell and RS would be 
the main ones that commercial outfits would deal with as JIT suppliers, with 
Arrow, EBV, and a few others acting as agents for major component 
manufacturers, but outfits like Maplin, Rapid, and some others tend to serve 
the retail hobbyist market.

>and the fact most rep's and vendors are easy to deal with, and
>willing to sample just about anything within reason.

Certainly I do not have a problem most of the time getting samples, although 
some outfits like Freescale seem to get all coy, as they don't see a huge 
commercial quantity sale coming up. 

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