[sdiy] Another proposal on top of Another proposal.

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow JB 'n' all.

At 12:12 PM 9/8/02 +0000, jbv wrote:
>Recently Batz suggested to put online infos about
>chips available for swap.

Actually I didn't. I merely seconded the motion. Any gathering of 
information such as this is probably helpful. So long as the benefit 
outweighs the work involved.

However! While we're on the subject. I've been looking for a small database 
program to keep track of my own chip inventory. Anyone got any suggestions? 
I'm not really big on databases and am yet to find a friendly one but all 
this talk of doing such things made me think that this might be something 
worth looking into.

So far I've tried four shareware inventory type databases but all of them 
have been pretty awful. This was after short-listing them from about 20 or 
30 candidates on various shareware repositories. Not a single one could 
import a comma delimited list. And if the authors think I'm gonna pay good 
money for the privilege of punching in the details of a couple of thousand 
chips (again) they're sadly mistaken.

The problem with selecting a database from a user's point of view is that 
these things hold your data captive. If you do all that work and then 
discover they're crap, you'd just blown a whole heap of time you could have 
better spent. And of course, the only way to find out they're crap is by 
having them filled with a critical mass of working data and using them.

So before I do that, and be bothered with yet another failed database 
system, has anyone got any suggestions for a small, cheap database program 
that's not going to waste my time?

-----------------
The other thing I was going to mention along these lines was a start-up we 
have down here that matches buyers with sellers to achieve good prices. If 
that's an adequate description?

Essentially what it does is form buying pools. Groups of people who, 
between them, have a larger buying power. The example I recall were people 
buying furniture. Even though they all wanted different things, buy walking 
through the door as a group and buying at the same time, they collectively 
saved 10s of thousands. And this wasn't a particularly large group. 10 or 
15 people tops.

I think similar things have been mentioned here before but I thought I'd 
put this forward because, whilst we may be small scale buyers individually, 
when you put us all together, we must buy thousands of dollars worth per 
month. Well OK I don't buy very much these days but still, collectively, we 
on the list, probably do.

My point being that some distributor or other would be inclined to give a 
substantial discount were a group of people to approach them as a single 
entity.

If that idea was expanded beyond the borders of Synth-DIY, then not only 
would our individual costs be lower, but it may also allow us enough volume 
to approach manufacturers direct. "Yes we'll take 20 tubes of 13700s thanks."

You get the idea.

So I thought it worth mentioning in case anyone wanted to run with it.

Hope this helps.

Be absolutely Icebox.

  _ __        _       ____Happiness is a warm penguin____
| "_ \      | |
| |_)/  __ _| |_ ____       ALL ELECTRIC KITCHEN
|  _ \ / _` | __|___ |  Yeti music by Yetis for Yetis
| |_) | (_| | |_  / /
|_,__/ \__,_|\__|/ /    BS    -----> http://all-electric.com
                 / ,__   Music -----> http://mp3.com/electrickitchen
Goodfortune    |_____|  cult  -----> http://www.subgenius.com