[AT] re: nase / VOM meters

[Matthew]

The old simpsons where good for their time.  Easy to hurt, even more so now
that everybody has gotten sloppy with dvm's.  Back in the day they where not
the sort of thing you would ever lend out.

Now I use my old trusty Fluke 8060A for stuff that needs to be accurate
but 90% of the time I use those $2.50 yellow plastic DVM's from harbor
freight, only with better test leads.  For the vast majority of the stuff
I do they are accurate enough, and if you leave one out in the rain, or
drive over it etc. you don't feel too bad.  I have two issues with them
but both are addressable.  The first one is they do not put a "dot" on
the business end of the range selector.  A small task for a sharpie, and
the other is the stock probes are junk, but a decent set of replacement
probes only sets you back 2-3x the cost of the meter.

I fear the good old days may be coming to a close though,  Last trip to HF
they only had a few of the $2.50 meters in the cardboard boxes, the new
ones are orange, and blister packed (so they will take an hour to open, and
you need some sort of a tool to start with) and they had a $9.99 price tag.
Ouch!


--Matthew