Admin Group
Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New ZealandPosts: 10039
| Posted: 11:12pm 01 Oct 2025 |
I got my September issue yesterday at Jaycar(they were quite late getting the issue in), and it is $14.90 in Kiwi dollars.
Fifteen bucks for a hobby magazine.
I did make a mental note of that last night before I started reading it.
I feel as though it is only fair to SC, to point out that they HAVE to charge what they do, to remain profitable as a business. I DON'T think they are ripping anyone off with their prices, it just reflects how expensive things are now - everything is, and SC is no exception to that rule.
I too have most copies of SC from back around the year 2000 or so, and I still enjoy reading it, and I will continue to buy copies - for now - but if the price goes up over about $16 an issue, that will pretty much be the end of it for me too.
We mustn't be ungrateful to SC though - they have published so many articles on the MicroMite series of chips and boards(that they didn't have to), that without them doing that, I don't think that the MM would be anywhere NEAR as popular as it is now in the hobby MCU area. We all owe SC a great deal of gratitude for their support of the MM - let's not forget that, DESPITE the price of the magazine now.
Looking back in time a little, I seem to recall the fall of Electronics Australia magazine, of which I had copies of from the 80's through to the time when they ceased publication, and SC basically took ownership of them at that point.
I remember LOTS of useful, interesting projects in EA for YEARS, but then they tried to improve their market share with a complete reformat and refocus and that basically ended the magazine, cos everyone who bought it for the projects and technical stuff, stopped buying it overnight, essentially. I don't blame EA for doing that at the time either. You have to go where you think the profit is, and in EA's case, that seemed to be the reformat to concentrate mostly on articles about the latest commerical and domestic electronics, and only a few pages of the magazine were left for any project like material. I'm going on my memory for all of that, so apologies if I have not got that exactly right, this is just how I remember it at the time. Please feel free to correct me, if I have got anything seriously wrong in the above.
So, when EA ceased, I then picked up SC and started following that from then, right up to now.
As for SMD parts, yeah, I had to resolder a couple of 0402 resistors on a module a week or so back, and yes - not fun. My standard SMD is 1206, and they are super-easy to hand solder. Even 0805 is easy enough to hand-solder, but once you get smaller then that....
