Author Topic: Millions of engineers and technicians are using cheap testers less than $10 and  (Read 14669 times)

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Uncle Vernon

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Rather, I am trying to deliver information from Chinese sources and collect them like literature review so the whole world (basically all at eev, :))    can have a look and discuss about it. .......................  I want to contribute to the community discussion.

You can contribute after posting 100 of  simple messages, because by this way you will have the awareness,
of what material are truly interesting to us .

And by 'us' you mean yourself don't you?

You made a worthless comment in the thread to the effect of 'this topic is of no interest to me because it is not relevant to me'. Well great. Imagine if everybody posted the same thought whenever it popped into their heads - IS THAT WHAT YOU ARE ADVOCATING?
Love the "you can contribute after posting 100 simple message" , there must be another set of forum rules, the KT abridged version which you and I and many other must have been unable to access. How exactly does someone post 100 messages without contributing? Are they expected to add a 100 meaningless posts or spams before attempting worthwhile contribution?
 
Unless I am very much mistaken these bursts of self applied authority are very much falsely assumed.
100 posts? why not 43? or 7? or 209? I'd prefer a single considered post any day, over 99 nothing deposits where post count took precedent over content. 

« Last Edit: September 03, 2011, 12:00:46 am by Uncle Vernon »
 

Uncle Vernon

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Clarify the definition of spam
def - Verb: Send the same message indiscriminately to (large numbers of recipients) on the Internet.
By that definition the simple act of responding to a popular forum post could be considered spam. But realistically the word indiscriminate has a real bearing on any definition of spam.

To advertise is not spamming, to advertise indiscriminately off-topic is. Unwanted advertising to one person may be of some value to another soul.

When I finished reading the original post I did feel I had wasted moments of my time, but then I've had that feeling from a great many other posts which were not intended as spam.

Dave has been quite clear he has no issue with on-topic advertising provided it is not excessive and does not hijack topics.

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I'll tell you what a signature is: it is a space that is part of our profile and your chance to tell others something about you that may or may not be in the context of the post. Many people post links to other websites that are their own or just their favorites and that they hold dear.

Agree totally, however I would suggest signatures be kept brief, while I have no issue with your signature perhaps you could revise yours to a single link with the other links on that web page. But hey that is just a suggestion, YOUR signature to be used as YOU desire.

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Unless i am replying simply to have these links shown they are not spam
indeed.

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Unfortunately as a moderator i sometimes have to ......
It's Dave's forum and as such the moderation team are his selections, something those others who consider themselves to hold self elected moderator status, could do well to comprehend this. Moderation is never fun, it's a sure fire path to copping a lot of abuse and personal attack. The difference is you hold the Sherriff's badge, those noisy complainants do not.  ;)
« Last Edit: September 02, 2011, 02:08:24 am by Uncle Vernon »
 

Offline IanB

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There's an interesting point here. You know how all of us totally ignore the spam emails selling Viagra in our inboxes? We don't for a moment give them a thought. Well the same is true in general of web sites selling goods at prices too good to be true from places like China. We have a mental filter that means we just turn away and ignore them for lack of trust. This is nothing against China; we have the same mental filter when we walk down a street market in our own country and ignore the hawkers selling their wares: "Not just this; I'll thrown in this too; and this; and this; and wait, there's more!"  ;D

When we are at home, we ignore those market vendors in the street and we go to reputable shops with some kind of guarantee and a return policy, even if they are more expensive.

Over time, we need a way to do this on the Internet. There will be trusted sellers on the Internet; the question is, how do we learn to tell who they are?
 

Offline Kiriakos-GR

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Over time, we need a way to do this on the Internet. There will be trusted sellers on the Internet; the question is, how do we learn to tell who they are?

There is no chance to do the same on the internet, the not existent eye contact, and the lack of fear from the side of the sales person,
that the misused customer is unable to actually touch him, makes the 80% of those sellers to act like donkeys.
Only companies with physical presence can act with the proper professionalism, because they have a face to loose,
when the shit will hit the fan.

Before some years some people who had the dream to become sellers, was believing that a fancy web page is all that they need for a successful e-shop.   
Now days,  there is millions of e-shops with out success,  why ?  because they had no experience about really dealing with the customers.

The faceless trading, and the anonymity, it would always be an obstacle for healthy trading.
If you add in the equation and the obstacle of the language barrier , the sum gets  totally negative. 
Not to speak about cultural differences in the way of trading between different nations. 
   
« Last Edit: September 02, 2011, 02:45:19 am by Kiriakos-GR »
 

Offline Kiriakos-GR

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UV you are a lost cause, and there is no words for your theoretical questions.

I did only one mistake, and this is that every new comer comes in this forum or to participate with a positive manner,
or to challenge Dave Jones.

This case, it is a challenge for Dave Jones, and he has to respond.
I just found in the cross fire, and  that's all about it.  ;D
« Last Edit: September 05, 2011, 09:01:00 pm by Kiriakos-GR »
 

Offline Lawsen

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If a million people are happy with those $10.00 multimeters than that is their desire.  There is a mistrust of things from China.  We are accustomed to instruments from U.S., Germany, England, Holland, and Japan.  Japanese instruments were originally viewed not as good as those made in the U.S.A.  Yokogawa, Advantest, and Sanwa are all now view as top instruments as good as those made and designed in the U.S.A.  The Rigol and Atten are not fairly accepted.  It was waste of money for me to try an Agilent DSOX2002a.  I use it along side with my Rigol 1052e.  I am not against the $10.00 multimeter for casual measurements, but I feel that I cannot work off entirely on the $10.00 multimeter.  I have a Fluke 12, 76-2, and 187.  The Fluke 12 is not perfect that the button carbon pads need cleaning.  I have difficult time to trust the Atten, so I have a made in the U.S.A. Tektronix 465 analog oscilloscope for comparison along with the Agilent 2002a.  The statistics would not surprise me, because China has 1/4 of 7 billion people on Earth.  Out that 1/4 of the world's entire population have engineers and technicians building everything from I Pods to Rigols.  If they are happy with it, fine.  Some of them do own Fluke, Philips made in Holland PM series as during the great recession, I see them for sale in Hong Kong electronics surplus stores.  I have used the Holland made Philips analog PM 2505 multimeter and the digital multimeter, the PM 2518.  They are really nice and enjoyed the experience very much.  Even in China, there are people that would purchase a Fluke, made in U.S.A.  Many of the Agilent GPS frequency standards are in China and in use in their cellular telephone towers.  American made things sell, but limited quantities and not mass sales to help the U.S. economy as the President's economic advisers foresee a semi-recession like economy until 2017. 
 

Online Simon

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to be honest i don't have any faith in the figures in the original post and view the whole thing as tosh but then that is just me !
 

Offline Bored@Work

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to be honest i don't have any faith in the figures in the original post and view the whole thing as tosh but then that is just me !

It is not just you.
I delete PMs unread. If you have something to say, say it in public.
For all else: Profile->[Modify Profile]Buddies/Ignore List->Edit Ignore List
 

Offline EEVblog

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Unfortunately as a moderator i sometimes have to do/say unpopular things, altrhough these are generally unpopular with a minority only. On the whole i act as an individual member and only speak up/take action when I feel the need but try and leave the bigger stuff to Dave, and hence this topic is still here !

Indeed it is still here.
And for those curious, here is my thinking along the lines of why I left it in place and the way I deal with forum issues:

First of all, although it did have a very "spammy" feel to it, it didn't have the feel of your usual spam.
It had numbers about on-topic stuff that might be of interest to some people, and whilst I didn't entirely agree with them or what was said, it is not my place to kill it because of that. I'm trying my best to run a "A Free & Open Forum For Electronics Enthusiasts & Professionals" as it says up the top. And that philosophy extends to commercial companies, provided they play nice and genuinely contribute something useful (good ads can in fact be useful IMO), just like I used to get great value out of reading the ads in the electronics magazines decades ago.
But it did warrant banning them, so I did just that, knowing that if they were genuine and wanted a right of reply or to get back in to clear the air, they could email me and explain.

As it turns out, I was right, and this post, whilst commercial, wasn't meant to come out like it did, as pointed out in a personal email from the poster I got. After I got that email, that was good enough for me to un-ban them.

Second, I thought the topic and post might have prompted lots of good on-topic discussion on the topic, so I'm not actually above leaving even deliberate spam messages in place, if good discussion (or even general social banter) has resulted from it.

I often see moderation reports calling for an entire thread to be killed because it started as a spam or whatever. Well, if you kill the thread then you kill all the messages of those genuine people who spent their time replying, and to me that's just not a kosher thing to do. I don't like erasing anyone's contribution unless I absolutely have to, even if it's just social banter.
Once you start moderating to try and keep things reasonably "on-topic", then the slippery slope it never ends, and you end up with the Altium forum! ;D
And of course, strict moderation has rarely proven to work on any technical forum, so it's foolish to even try.
A similar reasoning holds for flame wars and other silly little personal fights in threads. I just laugh knowing that it's a storm in tea cup and it will all pass, and it almost always does.
This is a social forum as well as a technical forum, that's just human nature, so my philology is to let almost everything slide, and only delete those things where it is truly necessary. I think those things would be pretty self evident to all reasonably civilised people.

The other moderators might not necessarily agree with my views (that's human nature too), and that's fine as well, but I trust them to do what they think is right in individual circumstances. And I think they are doing a great "hands off" job as well, so thanks guys!

Dave.
 

Online Simon

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I agree with not deleting spam for the sake of it, particularly if a meaningful discussion has taken place in the thread as it often does like this one and in fact the spammer just defeated the object because we just have another conversation and ignore them. I tend to try and just ban the user and not the post or wait until I see a pattern emerge.
There was a user a little while ago posting sort of themed topics but then never coming back which annoyed those who had gone in to reply only to get no interaction. I simply banned the user after asking for an explanation with the option to come and explain and left the topic there as others had had their own discussion under it, I suspect that the intention was to start a lot of "legitimate" topics and then throw a spam link in their signature that would become applied retrospectively.

Users posting totally unrelated posts and links get band and the posts removed, they are just littering. It's great to be open minded but we do have to be mindful that pathetic spamming is very rife these days and it is just annoying, can make the forum "untidy" and tedious to use. As you say Dave balance is required and most forum users know or should know how a forum works and the expected etiquette.

My opinion of the original post is not very high, I doubt much the claims and they are of little value to me, from my perspective someone is trying to convince me that stupidly cheap equipment that I know is built with no regard for safety or quality is as good as more expensive stuff just because lots of engineers buy cheap equipment. Well for me that is a pathetic and stupid argument to make. I don't give a rats ass what engineers buy (and they could be building site engineers for all i know), I'll buy what I think is fit for the job not what someones research tries to recommend me which they conveniently sell from what I gather.

Yes I've not given too much heed to arguments between members, you can't stop them and trying to unravel it all is just not feasible. This forum is what users make it, although as I'm sure many are aware I'm happy to supply an opinion any time.
 

Offline robbie1949

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Multimeters like the PM2505  are more useful than the cheap digital breed most techs seem to be content with these days. You still require an analogue meter that passes current through a PN junction  and at least 9V supply on high resistance ranges in order to check transistors & diodes. The PM2505 will not do this but nor will a digital multimeter.
      The PM2505  is excellent for it's accuracy and linear resistance scales.
 

Offline pickle9000

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Cheap testers or as I call them disposable ones.... I must say and I would guess that most people with a fluke also have a few others for shall we say less than ideal locations. Tool box on a boat for example. That's not to say they can or should be used everywhere as we all know they can be dangerous, but for continuity and low voltage checks almost anything will give you an idea of whats going on.
 

Offline houdini

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cheap meters have their place.  I have several of them because there are coupon from harbor freight for them free all the time so if they break i smash them with a hammer and move on nothing lost.  And some people would argue that a exploding multi meter would be a bonus.  Just don't do anything that could cause that while holding the meter.  So i guess it just depends on what area of electronic your into People into hv stuff that have a tendency to break stuff use cheap meters because it does not matter and people into more precision stuff need more precise instruments.
 

Offline poorchava

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I aggree that cheap meters have their place. I have like 5 UNI-T 30D's for all round usage. Very often I don't care is a voltage is 4.96V or 4.87V but rather if it is 0V, 0.7V, 3V or 5V, and those meters are perfect for that. Sure, I wouldn't use them for messing around with mains voltage. And if i decide that i need a precise measurement I can always double check with Fluke 87 or whatever.

I can understand people who buy cheap Chinese equipment. Let's talk numbers:
Suppose you live in US and make $3.5k/month
Living in Germany for example would yield a similar number, maybe $3k/month
Living in Poland this becomes $1k (and that is considered as decently paid job)
So if you express price of something as a fraction of your monthly income, then that thing costs 3x more in Poland than it does in US or Germany, because you would have to work 3 times as much to buy that thing. Now if we take China into consideration where salaries are even less, then then buying anything becomes even more expensive. If you add the fact, that many companies set much higher prices for some stuff in Europe than they do in US, you get up to 10x difference.

Example: Hakko FX888 is $100 in US, so 1/35 of your monthly income. Same HakkoFX888 is like $300 in Poland, which is nearly 1/3 of average salary. And that is precisely why Hakko is virtually unknown in eastern Europe.

Another Example: 16GB iPhone 5 is like $650 contract-free in US. Same iPhone in Poland is like $900 (prices directly from apple store). That is like 1/5 of monthly salary in US, and almost WHOLE monthly salary in Poland. And that is precisely why apple is not popular at all (i personally won't ever complain to that, I wouldn't use their shit even if they paid me to do it) - products are too expensive.

Same goes for anything else including test equipment. You use what you can afford, simple as that. While this may not necessarily be the best attitude when you use that equipment for making money, and high quality will pay off, it is quite often ONLY possible way for a hobbyist to have any equipment at all.

I love the smell of FR4 in the morning!
 

Offline houdini

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I agree with poorchava I am in high school and have a yearly income of whatever i can buy at yard sales and resell on eBay so not a whole lot.  So most of the time i do have money to spend on electronics i tend to buy components that cant be had extremely cheap like mosfets and such.  So not a whole lot of money for test equipment.  But i have multimeters that will tell me is this 5% resistor in spec?  Is this thing outputting power? etc.  I also managed to get a old scope to tell me things like is this mosfet about to exceed its Vds and explode again?  But the point is you don't have to spend a ridiculous amount of money on multimeters to enjoy electronics.  You can still accomplish a lot on a really limited budget.  Also would you use a 300$ multimeter to measure the current of a 50kv flyback output?  You can use a multimeter to measure that but i wouldn't use an expensive one for such things.  Also when you hit the lcds with 30+kv you just trash them and don't have to spend enough money on a multimeter that you could buy a stupid amount of high power leds or something similarly interesting on.

But IF you can afford them im sure they are great.
 


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