Digikey... fast, uncluttered website, vs. mouser which is always slower. 
  Always.  They need to cut a lot of graphics and get moving.  However, 
digikey's pick error rate has been bad the past 2 years.  I would say 
every 3rd order of more than 30 items has an error.  Their customer 
service is great, but I have a collection of wrong components they have 
sent.

Price-wise I don't care unless something costs more than $50 (i.e. 
whatever it is * the # I need is over $50), in which case I may shop a 
little.  It is rarely worth ordering from mouser to save $, it would 
have to be several items to warrant the hassle + additional shipping.

Digikey has only once not shipped the same day I placed the order by the 
cutoff time, and they warned about it on their website, b/c of blizzard 
conditions.  Once.  Ever.  In 10 years.

Mouser hasn't failed to ship either, but I order from them a lot less.

For prototype quantities, usually on a client's dime, I use digikey for 
everything.  If making 50+ of something, it becomes worth the time to 
shop, but until then, availability, speed of finding parts, and shipping 
when they say beats small price differences.

Jameco is a mess for searching, but for things like header pins and 
molex connectors they beat digikey by a lot.  Annnnd.... I can go pick 
it up same-day in emergency situations.  (a 45min drive each way.)

Also you can feed mouser a digikey part#, and they will search correctly 
with it, at least some of the time.  Eerie!

J



Funny NYPD wrote:
> Based on the years of experience with all these major distributor, we
> have found that: 1. Digikey has the fastest shipping and order
> process, they can guarantee your parts will be your desk next
> business day by 10:00am. The price is not the lowest, but still in a
> reasonable range. 2. Mouser has the best balance between the price
> and order process speed. It beats Digikey price on most case. 3.
> Allied Elec. may have the best price sometime, but the shipping
> process is kind of slow, really slow sometime. 4. Newark used to work
> fine, unfortunately we slowly abandoned it since it lacks its own
> character on price and service, it seems we can live well without
> Newark.
> 
> A few other larger distributor (such as: Future Elec, Arrow, etc.)
> may get better price if your order are in the 100K range. But
> overall, Digikey, Mouser and Allied will meet our requirement.
> 
> What have you found?
> 
> Funny N. Au Group Electronics, http://www.AuElectronics.com 
> http://www.AuElectronics.com/products http://augroups.blogspot.com/
> 
> 
> 
> 
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