He'll only save time if he knows how to make it work consistently. His loss so far is maybe $10, and some time, which costs little in a hobby setting. This thread is 6 days old... He'd still be a week away from a PCBPool board showing up at his doorstep. Once he gets the procedure down, his costs both in time and money will drop.


In a professional setting... The $40 PCBPool board costs less than 1 hour of engineer pay. Expidited, probably still less than a day's wage. A company pays no taxes on these costs, rather they're writeoffs against earnings. So in that setting it makes sense. But... Just a quick back of envelope guesstimate... An average US wage is what $20/hr? Loose 40% to various taxes, then take away a chunk more for a roof over your head, food and the like, and you're left with maybe $2 - 5/hr disposable income? That makes that cheap $40 board several days disposable income for an average US wage. Admittedly, things improve rapidly as you move above average wage. But nobody gets to write off their "hobby expenses".



Finally... You're viewing it thru the lens of a professional ruled by the time/money equation. Some of us engineer for the joy of making things. I like to sit in my workshop and simply build stuff. I can easily buy a 8051 board, and hire a coder, but where's the fun in that? Edison supposedly said "Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work."