Purchase/Prebuild - What's the difference?

[dlavery]

All of the sudden I am really longing for the "good ol' days" when you could only build your robot from the stuff in the kit, the specific additional parts list, and $425 of parts from Small Parts. And that was ALL you could use to build your robot. I know that some didn't like the limitations at the time, but I really enjoyed that approach. It made you THINK about how to use the limited materials that were available for use. You had no choice, you HAD to get creative - buying a subsystem off the shelf just wasn't in the cards. And all these debates about what we could or could not buy, barter or trade as a finished solution would have been moot - they just weren't allowed.

Ahh, well. Now we got all these new-fangled shifting transmissions, and fancy-schmancy multi-motor drive trains, and gol-danged 'struded al-new-min-ium stuff, and all that. And everyone is thinking about how to grab whole sections of their robot as quick as they can, and have the entire thing bolted together three hours after kick-off. Just doesn't seem the same to me.

Too bad we can't halt progress. If only we could go back to the good ol' days. Guess I'll just go back to walking barefoot to the one-room school house. Through five feet of snow. Uphill. Both ways. (grumble, mutter, grumble ...)

-dave