Microchip deals (25 Feb)

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granddad

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Saw this , may be of interest ....
Two great deals to choose from:
Deal 1 is a bundle and includes:
  • Over 95% off MPLAB(R) Device Blocks for Simulink(R) (SW007023)
  • $100 off the MCLV-2 Development Board (DM330021-2)
  • Almost 50% off the PICkit 3 In-Circuit Debugger (PG164130):
Deal 2 is a great discount on the blocks only and includes:
  • Over 90% off the MPLAB(R) Device Blocks for Simulink(R) (SW007023)

**broken link removed**
 
When is the PK3 EOL?? i only just noticed the PK4!! Guess i better get one in case i go back to pics.
 
A PICkit 4? Hopefully they include the features of the PICkit 2!
 
LG Not sure the 'deal' is all it seems... #1 is 99$ " device blocks" Not come across these . I thought you had a PK3 clone ?
 
I have a pk3 and the pk3 real one and 2 icd3's i didnt even know there was now a icd4!! i wont be spending nearly £200 on it though, the pk3 has always been around £37 so how is that half price?
 
So what are ETO members perceived view / attitude that MC takes to the PIC hobbiest , I presumed because of all the 'free' SW , and (what were reasonably priced ) tools, it is quite supportive / positive , LG you seem to have a different view ? leaving old parts behind happens with all manufacturers ...
 
Actually if you go back to my very first posts on the forum, i was a big big advocate of microchip, they were superb. they have changed as a company. read back five years ago, both here and MC forum. All posts say for example MC will replace the ICD3 /2 for life as it was a pro tool, they stood by it, fast forward to maybe a year or so ago and mine that i got 14 months previously gave up on me. MC told me tough, they dont warrant it for life its 12 months and always has been (untrue).

What they didnt bother looking at was my account, because on it they had replaced 3 pk3's when they messed up with MS 64bit drivers and bricked loads of pk3's. they gave me free replacements for a while. MC just isnt the company they were, i switched to sil labs because they are the company that MC was 5 years ago, sure they will go the same way, but at the moment apart from the horrific site they have, they are excellent. they paid for my trip to Austin to go meet them, i wrote on there blog and facebook for a while with projects i did with the kits they sent me, simple silly things but they liked them, free tools as well and ARM cores, customer service like MC was. Staff on the forum and not A Hats that has always been on the MC forum.

For now sil lab cares about customers, so did MC. But honestly as much as i love the docs from MC as a company they dont fit me any more. It isnt about supporting parts, its about changing to make money instead of changing because your evolving. buying Atmel killed them as a company, same as buying up Hitech killed a decent compiler and IDE.
 
Oh and yes i am aware the above is a totaly one sided personal opinion, if you like them then use them, the chips are great, the company is what i have issues with.
 

Not a bad company, just a company willing to take initiative. I fired several customers in the past 10 years. It is better to have customers that generate negative profits enjoying your competitors products.
 
gophert said:
It is better to have customers that generate negative profits enjoying your competitors products.
Click to expand...
Very insightfull. I like that thought.

JimB

(Is "insightfull" a real word, or did I just make it up?)
 
gophert said:
Not a bad company, just a company willing to take initiative. I fired several customers in the past 10 years. It is better to have customers that generate negative profits enjoying your competitors products.
Click to expand...
No n0t a bad company, but once upon a time they were a great company. How do you manage to get clients that generate negative profits? Not got much experience in business, but so far i have managed to work with all my customers so everyone is happy.

The very first shop i sold into could only take stock from us on sale or return, they were pretty stretched cash wise. TBH so were we but i figured if nothing else it was somewhere to keep a little stock for four weeks for free. This was October last year, they didnt find many suppliers willing to take back stock, so instead of bare shelves they took more of ours. As it turns out i have only had to remove 2 box's that were not selling, they are really great customers now, they speak with enthusiasm to there customers about us.

They take anything I offer them and every 4 weeks the money for what they have sold is sitting waiting for me. Febs figures show they are on target to be our best outlet shop wise, and the cherry on the cake they are going to open another shop this year, but this time in a better town. So i am always careful before i put a customer in one box or another.
 
Bad customers are those that are always asking for information, support, basically taking time but never buying anything.

One of mine that comes to mind. An auto manufacturer wanted a system to test heater/AC fan assemblies before they were installed on the assembly line. If a fan was faulty, the entire dashboard had to come off to replace the relatively cheap parts. We made a proposal. Traveled to the plant to demonstrate the system and proved we could detect problems. Not good enough. They built fans with problems and sent something like 20 to test and identify problems. 18 fans had problems when we tested them. "But we only built 10 with problems." "No, you only created problems in 10. Eight others had bearing problems and assembly defects you didn't know about."

Nothing happens with the project. A year later, they come back. They want more. For less money. Fine. We agree. Maybe we can get back some of what was spent on this project. Everybody's happy. We have just about reached an agreement when we are told "We expect YOU to have a spare system on the shelf ready to go and 24/7 support on the factory floor within an hour." This from somebody half-way across the country from us. I'm sorry, I think our competitors have a better solution for you.
 
Different areas though, in engineering i can see that as a problem, with the kind of products i sell its a up selling opportunity or at the moment its a chance to really understand what people want. On the science side and some the things we do there like the turbine fiasco.... Different kettle of fish, for me the worse so far has been talking to car guys about PM10 filter plates, they know cars but not how burnt fuel molecules behave.

I wont get into it but Cat converters pose a possible problem and wouldnt be needed with the new system, car guys insist they are needed material chemists insist they are not and manufactures just want to know if we can reproduce the results without actually fitting the device lol
 
Little Ghostman said:
How do you manage to get clients that generate negative profits? Not got much experience in business, but so far i have managed to work with all my customers so everyone is happy.
Click to expand...

By making broad rules to simplify business and how customer service and tech support interact with difficult customers.

Negative profit (losses) come into play when some snot-nosed little kid keeps bricking his PicKit3 and asking for a free replacement eventually means the time of adddressing his issue, packinging, postage and new PicKit3 eventually costs more than the Profit from the first PicKit3 that he paid for - especially if they only had one customer world-wide who managed to brick more than one. Poof, their problem is gone.
 
I expect they hedge there bets, some snotty kids go on to become people like you, others of course go on to achieve greatness or become important.....
 
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I always assumed that MC supported small users in the hope they turned into huge users.

Mike.
 
Pommie said:
I always assumed that MC supported small users in the hope they turned into huge users.

Mike.
Click to expand...
They did, and they used to replace the ICD 3's for life. But for several years now they only give 12 months warranty on them, but if you push them then they will replace. Had gofart bothered to read the posts properly he would know that the pk3's were bricked because originally when win7 came out MC used there own USB drivers for the 64 bit version of win 7. If you go onto MC forum there is a number of posts from that time of people complaining of completely bricked pk3's. It turned out to be the USB drivers and certain chips and IDE settings.

I was one the people who had several PK3's bricked, they refused to replace until it became known that the fault was in the MC USB driver. It only happened when switching chip families from 16 bit back to 8 bit devices and having mplab installed under 64bit. Those who had it installed under 32 bit didnt get problems, but it took them a long time to figure out, there is a post on the MC forum where they ended up posting a file to try and fix it, then they posted a modified firmware and instructions on reprogramming the PK3 (hard without pogo pins).

in the end it was easier to install MPLAB under 32 bit and use the MS drivers or not switch from the affected families. But in gofarts world that makes it the customers fault...... those kind of customers need sacking, once they did sack me i went over to sil labs and never looked back.
 
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