I agree with Ethan. Surface mount is different but not necessarily harder. I find desoldering through-hole to be many times harder than desoldering surface mount. I *hate* desoldering through-hole components, if I need to do it non-destructively. If I can destroy the component in the process it's not as bad, just tedious--very very tedious. I've desoldered and resoldered up to 208 pin QFPs so far. I've only done a couple of those. Mostly I did 160 pin QFPs. But I have not had a failure yet. That is, the chips always remained functional. There were one or two times where I had to touch up the soldering job to get the board fucntional--I sometimes remove too much solder during clean up. The trick to surface mount soldering is being aware of how surface tension can work for you and using it. It's a different set of habits and way of thinking from through-hole. I did my 208 pin QFP desolder/resolder with some Chip Quik alloy, a Milwaukee brand heat gun, modeling clay (to keep surrounding components from blowing away) a 40 watt and a 15 watt soldering pencil from Radio Shack and a little bottle of soldering flux with a brush. Oh, I guess there was a roll of solder and some spray can flux cleaner, as well as swabs and alcohol involved. But nothing expensive or exotic. Up to about 40 or 50 pins, I don't need the heat gun. The soldering pencils are sufficient. For surface mount resistors, I usually tin one pad. Then heat that pad with a pencil in one hand and place the resistor with tweezers in the other hand. Hold in place with the tweezers and remove the pencil so that the solder cools to hold the resistor in place. For magnification I use a 10X magnifying cup and hold the big end in my eye socket by squishing it into the skin around the eye, sort of like a monacle. The last time I checked these were available in the jewelry section of Ebay for under $5. Jeff Walther