[91bananas]

I think everything McMaster dates to it being a physical book first. They still operate on that same business model, but we have the internet now. The supplied product might change, but it still meets whatever specification is in the catalog that is released yearly. If they could guarantee a TI-83 Plus was what you were going to get they would have put it in the catalog, but they couldn't so they don't. And they STILL operate out of that physical book for some customers, so the website has to match it too. That's my take.

[alnwlsn]

Oh yeah, the books are impressive in their own right. However many items you think they sell looking at the website, the book reveals you were a couple orders of magnitudes off. 1000+ bible-thin pages of well laid out tables and product photos. It's pretty much what the website would look without any filtering of the items.

The books are fun to leaf through on occasion, or if you need to take up an extra 3 inches on your bookshelf with something yellow. If you have one, it makes you feel like a real engineer. But I greatly prefer the website.

[bombcar]

The old grainger catalogs were like that. Uline is similar but not even 1/4 the number of products.