"Cursitor Doom" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 10:51:40 +0100, Roger Mills
wrote:


Indeed. I've got a Maplin all-in-one jobbie, and am not all that
impressed. The picture isn't all that good, and the screen bit
inevitably moves when you manipulate the camera end, so it's difficult
the work out the orientation of what you're looking at. Typical intended
use was things like trying to see where waste pipes went, behind a
kitchen cabinet - but I ended up totally confused!

With hindsight, would I have bought it? No.

I'm getting ****ed off with Maplin lately. Terrible delivery times and
pretty crap quality goods. It's about time Conrad opened up over here;
show those Essex ******* how it's done.


Hell yeah,

I discovered Conrad Electronics during a trip to Germany in 2004, i started
in the general electrics bit which alone was about the size of an average
maplin superstore, then there were some steps down to the electronics area,
and i thought 'this is what maplins used to be like before they drifted away
from electronics into selling kids toys'

The cable machine alone was amazing (all computerised, bloke selected the
cable you wanted on a touch screen, machine rotated and brought out the roll
with the cable on, about 30 or so reels to a roll, and it lit up a led under
the cable reel he wanted, then he slid the measuring and winding machine to
the reel, inserted the end of the cable and pressed start,
Cable was drawn off the reel, counter counted up in millimeters and was
wound onto a spider type thing,
At the exact length, it added 20mm then cut the cable and shot a couple of
bits of tape around the loops of cable on the spider, one of them being a
bar-coded label, then relaxed the spiders arms for the bloke to pull the
wound cable off, and whilst he was handing it over to me the machine put
it's self away again.

And as for the selection of cables on offer, i got some UV safe thick
insulated solar panel link up cable to connect the 2 more panels i had
bought over there on my motorhomes roof, only saw that stuff in specialist
shops before online.

Then there was a lift to the upstairs part which housed the modeling section
which was out of this world, radio controlled everything from 20 euro mini
helecopters to thousand euro trucks with gears, lights, sounds that you
could feel,
planes.. electric and glow engined, gliders, air ships, hover crafts, boats,
subs, all kinds of cars road and off road, tanks, motorbikes and so on (i
succumbed to a 1:5 scale petrol engined RC buggy in a sale for half the
price available in england online)

Then the model train section, everything from G gauge garden railways stuff
down to the Z gauge, big HO layout suspended from the ceiling that went
around the modeling section,

There was a section for car audio stuff, and more sections i can't recall,
i was impressed at being able to buy UK 13 amp plugs and sockets there.


If maplins don't watch it, they will go the way tandy went, sell more and
more **** and toys, ditch the electronics side apart from a few led's and
resistors, then wonder why no one bothers shopping with them.

I recall back at the turn of the century going into nottingham maplins after
a transistor equivalent, bloke didnt even need to look it up in the book and
got me a few that worked,
Don't think they have had the books for years, and most of the bods working
there nowadays don't know what a transistor is.