[GeeTwo]

There's definitely inertia in teams adopting any new item, whether part of the control system, an actuator, or a mechanical system. Our overwhelmingly positive experiences with the Talon SR and Spike (and negative experiences with Victors and even worse with Jaguars) led us to use these two motor controllers/switches exclusively last year. This year, especially as the Talon SR has been discontinued, we do plan some experimentation with the Talon SRX, and some of the new less expensive motor controllers (SPARK and SD540). Over the years as an occasional purchaser for the government, I've learned to take vendors' tests with a big grain of salt. It's rather harsh to say this, but one failure under conditions where we cannot produce calculations that would lead us to expect failure or which may be beyond our reasonable control can put a motor controller on our black list, along with the Jags and Victors. At this point, we keep Vics and Jags around just to give the freshmen a sense of how much things have improved even in recent years; we haven't put either on so much as an off-season project in over two years.

In the interest of total disclosure, I am personally quite harsh on vendors who seriously disappoint me. For example, I haven't had a McDonalds hamburger since my sophomore year in high school (can't you dress a hamburger without including that awful special sauce?), and I haven't bought anything but a few batteries and tires (and those under otherwise desperate situations) from Wal-Mart in over ten years. The traffic from selling groceries drove me 90+% away circa 2003; the way they abandoned New Orleans after Katrina in contradiction of all of their advertising about helping communities after disasters sealed the deal.