For United States residents, 2 great places are Amazon... You can buy SainSmart and return it in the same week. Amazon sell the 3.2" 320 X 240 displays for $19 - $20.00
you can also find bootloaded 328's for $2.99... and all 8 I've bought were perfect. There are many other electronics and Arduino products for sale there as well.
OddWires http://www.oddwires.com/ has competitive deals is local, more or less to the western end of the United States and is a new company... I originally found on Ebay. They seem willing to be helpful and they have a good selection of basics.
I'll give them a try - ordered an FTDI interface board.
No sales tax, $2 USPS shipping.
We'll see where it ships from, the websites gives no indication of where they are located.
Do not forget Amazon Prime, for $79/year, you get;-
FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items
No minimum order size
Free or paid Amazon Prime members can share their shipping benefits with up to four additional
family members living in the same household, or up to four coworkers. I share it with my kids and my parent. The key issue is independent account no share at credit card. I means kids.
You might not need to pay, Amazon offer Free membership to student, and it is shareable as well.
For US military service members and diplomatic personnel only.
Here is USPS offer;-
Our military service members and diplomatic personnel work hard for us overseas. Far from home, few things brighten their days more than mail from friends and loved ones. APO/FPO/DPO shipments has same domestic prices rate.
Obviously you need to select US vendor who could use USPS as shipping company.
Far from home, few things brighten their days more than Arduino from friends and loved ones.
Ok, so you're suggesting buying parts thru Amazon.
Locate an item, research the actual ship-from location, wait weeks for delivery.
I don't think so.
For example:
16 MHz crystal
Lowest price found is for 3 pieces
Apparently made by Amico,
but not amico.com, which is in the healthcare industry About | Amico Group of Companies
but distributed by uxcell, Uxcell
which resells parts from 100 factories in China
So who knows what you actually get and where it came from.
Pass on that.
CrossRoads:
TaydaElectronics is in Bangkok, but shipments to the US seem to originate in Colorado.
Consolidation and Groupage then Re-distribution
Consolidation is the practice of combining diverse cargoes (pre-packaged and labeled) into single shipments then transport it to destination country hubs, to achieve substantial savings on freight costs and speed up the shipping. These hubs accept larger shipments and then break it up and function as distribution centers for cargo to reach smaller outlying communities. This method will working very well for 2 countries have huge difference labor rate.
It happens that I bought a package of 25 16 MHz crystals from Amazon, All were good product and the 6 or 7 I've used so far were fine and IF the parts are not directly from Amazon the wait is never more than a week.. usually 5 days MAX for non Prime parts. or at least that's been my experience.
Let's not forget about adafruit.com, pololu.com and sparkfun.com if you want to play with surface mount components. They sell a lot of breakout boards with cool things like surface mount accelerometers, gyroscopes, GPS, etc... You can plug the breakout boards into breadboards and have fun with them, without having to deal with surface mount soldering.
I'm particularly fond of adafruit breakout boards because they usually include a voltage regulator circuit, that allows you to use the components with 5V or 3.3V. Surface mount components generally use 3.3V
For mechanical "robotish" stuff, servocity.com is like a candy store to a 6 year old.
The vendors are doing business in more than 25 years;-
MCM Electronics
http://www.mcmelectronics.com/
Raspberry Pi, electronic parts
10% of each Pi sold donated to the Pi Foundation.
I order my Pi from them, but they are not able to took my customer ID which is 25+ years old as well as inactive among that time, they are not get my 100% business!
Centerville, OH 45459, USA
Parts Express
http://www.parts-express.com/
electronic parts
Free shipping over $98, 45 day No hassle Returns, Same day shipping
Springboro, OH 45066, USA
CrossRoads:
In the US ( you are WA, yes? update your profile)
I guess you got it by use some kind of IP geolocation database or service. http://www.ip2location.com/, in general it working very well. However it is not bulletproof.
BGP will drive IP geolocation totally nuts, since now one ip (OK, IP ranges before pylon correct me again) could has multiple physical locations, say one is NYC, one is San Francisco.
I am not aware location of profile is required, now I do. I have updated mine.
Some time having "correct" geo-ip might be last solution, I did it for my parent since they would like see Chinese TV program on net with Ipad at US which is only available from China geo-ip, I have some and just "lend" it to my parent.
The Robot Shop (www.robotshop.com) has some cool stuff but it takes a while to get here as they are in NY and their shipping is a little pricey. The thing is that they carry some stuff no one else does (like tracked chassis).
I've ordered stuff from Adafruit (www.adafruit.com) and Hacktronics (www.hacktronics.com) and have been satisfied with what I received. I think Hacktronics is in San Diego and Adafruit in NY.
I had to comment on this...I buy all my components from active-robots.com. I wasn't sure about where to get them but they've been a real help! Bought all parts for my robot hobby especially phidgets which are really hard to buy anywhere. I'd suggest having a look on there!