Doc, retro, and others, thanks for the helpful information. The 87 I was planning on simply getting a used one on ebay when the time was right. You can usually get them for quite a discount and there are always ones up for auction. As for the reason, I'd ideally like my temperature sensor to be accurate to the tenth of a degree Fahrenheit. This is for a weather station project. From all my research on the matter, it seems the best I'll be able to do is ~0.2C (0.36F) accuracy , and that's with an integrated sensor package such as the SHT75. I did want to add a couple thermistors to complement the 75 (for backup and accuracy reasons), but it appears in order for that approach to be feasible I'd have to purchase a .05% tolerance 10k resistor for the reference, and either use a 12-16bit ADC alongside a 0.1% thermistor, or else use some type of multisampling solution to improve the arduino's native ADC resolution. Not sure if it's worth all that hassle, especially since they'd also each have to be calibrated too, and I'd have to use ones with known steinhart-hart coefficents or else an extensive thermistor table. The one I am testing with right now has no part number or anything so it's truly a mystery.