The site is decent and light. It allows you to start filling your cart and just leave--come back the next day, your cart will still be there (ah the magic of cookies). One really important thing for me now is that Digikey knows there's a country right next door and has a subdomain, ca.digikey.com which has all prices in Canadian dollars and includes all the extra fees we need to pay over here (you know, for free health care, education and such ;-) ).

We placed our order over the weekend and didn't request any express shipping. Although originally scheduled to be a dreary December day, the following Tuesday was considerably brightened by the unexpected arrival of a Purolator guy dropping off this box in our lobby.

Although rather large, the box weighed in at only 4 pounds--and that's including the enormous quantity of protective anti-static loose-fill peanuts. I felt a little bad about all that packaging material being used up for our small order...

Not to worry though, the peanuts were actually environmentally friendly--and certified too! The package contained this notice indicating that the "Green Cross Company" (somehow related to Scientific Certification Systems) certified the peanuts as 100% recycled, stating that they might be photodegradable and offering a toll-free 800 number to find out which of the 4000 recycling/re-use centers is closest.

Finally, one thing I really appreciated was our order. It arrived, complete and in good condition, correctly labeled and protected. And, for most products, digikey won't force you to buy large quantities (our order contained a number of phototransistors, op-amps and CMOS logic chips in 2s and 3s, just so we can try them out before buying a bunch) but they'll often reduce the price for "bulk" orders of as little as 10 items.