On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 3:25 AM, Vitaliy wrote: > Herbert Graf wrote: >> Sounds more like bean counters got their hands on things. > > IIRC Sanghi said the cost of the program was in the tens of millions > ($60M/y?). If I were in charge, I would definitely consider pulling the plug > on the free samples, versus laying off several hundred engineers. Wow, is it really $60 million? I doubt that is true. But if that number is correct, then it is quite right to reduce that number. >> If that were the case they'd all implement those "ways". > > Why do you assume they didn't? I bet that the change in policy (how many > times you can order and how many samples at a time) was initiated by > someone who looked at the patterns and figured that this change would > make it less convenient for the scammers to get the stuff in sufficient > volumes. Still some legitimate users may have already got some bad impressions about Microchip because of this change. Things are changing. I have to tell the local Microchip FAEs about free hardware tools and eval boards other vendors are providing. I also tell them about the lower cost chips other MCU vendors are offerings which makes 16bit/32bit Microchip MCUs really not that competitive. We do buy tools from other vendors as well. But often we got free eval boards from other vendors to get started. We did borrow some tools from Microchip for a small design. But in the end, we bought the tools instead. They are not expensive after all. Still a free tool might help. -- Xiaofan http://mcuee.blogspot.com -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist