On Tue, 12 May 2009 22:29:03 +0100, Tim S wrote:

Mike Harrison coughed up some electrons that declared:

(Farnell : poor data but mostly useable, RS : useless), as the
data has obviously been entered by someone who actually understands what
it means (e.g. 5V = 5v =5.0V = 5VDC etc.) ...If they'd only add 'sort by
price' to their website.

I agree - was looking for 12v or 24v water valves the other day. Never seen
so many typos on "12v" - a bloody perl script with a basic regexp could
have pre filtered most of that into something sane during data input fairly
trivially.

At least with Farnell, you have combo boxes so multiple selection is
possible even if you do come across such problems.

Precisely - RS's data is just as bad as Farnell's but the inability to select multiple items renders
it mostly useless.
You wouldn't believe the number of times I've explained this to RS reps at exhibitions..... (along
with a request for the ability to filter by 'in stock') but they don't appear to pay much attention,
so Farnell continue to get most of my business.

The main problem with Farnell is where some parts have no entries in their parameter fields so they
get filtered out when they shouldn't.