General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Radio shacks days are numbered [View all]0rganism
(23,945 posts)Digikey? Mouser? You need to prototype a single unit overnight, not wait 5 days for a shipment to come in, so where you gonna go? i'll definitely miss Radio Shark, it was my convenience store for certain parts through grad school. There's a couple indy electronics component outlets around, but that's another two hours in traffic and there's a RS on the way home from work -- which one is going to get your project going on time?
Granted, whenever i went in there i was the only one going through their component bins, and the whole store seemed like a ghost town with a large cell phone rack. I really felt for the workers there, i'd pop in, spend a few minutes poking around, and show up at the register with $10-worth of overpriced parts. You could just see the despair in their eyes, "our only customer in 4 hours and he's not here for a phone."
I'm thinking it's not really possible to have a successful business based around catering to the needs of short-on-time EE grad students, although sparkfun does come close...