Farnell review...

[mikeselectricstuff]

I had an email from Farnell inviting me to pick anything 'around £25' from their website to do a review of.
Any suggestions welcome....
Part of me wants to choose something really silly like a bag of screws, although the review might turn out to be like those cable TV shows where they can spend an hour talking about a hairbrush or whatever...

[ElektroQuark]

£25...
£25...
£25..
£25, really?
£25!

[Bored@Work]

Get something silly, like a bunch of AAA batteries, do a detailed unboxing, including lyrical waxing about the fine way the address label is attached to the box. And then follow up with a detailed review of the batteries. Including such important issues like weighting each battery and doing statistics with the results.

And make every third sentence one of

By the way,  Farnell won't sell these batteries to you if you are a hobbyist in Denmark,.

By the way, Farnell won't sell these batteries to you if you are a hobbyist in Finland.

By the way, Farnell won't sell these batteries to you if you are a hobbyist in Norway.

By the way, Farnell won't sell these batteries to you if you are a hobbyist in Sweden.

By the way, Farnell won't sell these batteries to you if you are a hobbyist in Germany.

By the way, Farnell won't sell these batteries to you if you are a hobbyist in Austria.

By the way, Farnell won't sell these batteries to you if you are a hobbyist in Portugal.

By the way, Farnell won't sell these batteries to you if you are a hobbyist in India.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Sorry meant to post this in reviews section - can someone move it please...

[gregariz]

Sorry meant to post this in reviews section - can someone move it please...

Mike.. you seem pretty geared up for PCB proto-ing and I've always had a curiousity about those aluminium substrates PCB's

http://uk.farnell.com/cif/aat10/pcb-aluminium-100x150/dp/4147984

[Zad]

You got that too eh? The guy I got an email from (it is an official Farnell email address) also seems to run a Search Engine Optimisation business, so I guess  they are after links back from your blog to the manufacturer's page on the Farnell site to bump them up the search results page.

It has confused the hell out of me.

Initially I got an email saying more or less what yours did, with the addition "you can choose from many brands such as <X> <Y> <Z> (etc) to the value of £30"

I wrote back asking them to clarify if it was limited to just those brands, or could I choose anything?

He wrote back saying "Choose something as discussed in my email to a value not exceeding £30". Yeah thanks for that clarification. It really helped.

I eventually chose several items, including from the list of manufacturers he had listed. Saying my preference was for the first item, but if that wasn't available then to go down the list. Not having a paper catalogue to flick through, it took me a fair time to decide.

He then wrote back saying "You must choose something up to £25".

Urgh.

I really want to, in my situation £30 (or £25) is a pretty big chunk of cash, but I feel like the guy is taking me for a ride, and whatever I say to him never seems to elicit a clear answer.

[saturation]

How about fairly common items?

Solder
Wire
cables/patch cords
BNC adapters/connectors
resistors
capacitors

[EEVblog]

Farnell (Element 14) have a very active active campaign of trying to get reviews and other content at the lowest possible cost. Others like RS DesignSpark do similar.
They approach every blogger on the planet and offer them pittance for the content and valuable SEO link backs.
My advice, avoid, or really have fun with it so we can all have a laugh!
(and make sure reviews are non-indexable!)

Dave.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Farnell (Element 14) have a very active active campaign of trying to get reviews and other content at the lowest possible cost. Others like RS DesignSpark do similar.
They approach every blogger on the planet and offer them pittance for the content and valuable SEO link backs.
My advice, avoid, or really have fun with it so we can all have a laugh!
(and make sure reviews are non-indexable!)

Dave.

Can they index links in youtube annotations?

[mikeselectricstuff]

[Neilm]

Get something silly, like a bunch of AAA batteries.

Those would not be silly. A collegue had to do something similar at work when we were deciding what brand of battery we would supply in our products. It involved having to measure the capacities of the batteries both out of the box and after cycling them with heat treatments to simulate shipping them.

Neil