On Mar 16, 7:39*pm, David Nebenzahl wrote:
I'm on my, oh, third el-cheapo (~$3)DMM(digital multimeter) from HF.
Guess this one'll keep working fine if I can keep it dry and not stomp
on it.

snip

I have about 15 of them. About 5 years ago I prepared a presentation
for "Enrichment Day" for my son's 4th grade class on Ohm's law. I
built twelve platforms each with ten resistors in series, and two AA
cells, very unkludgily constructed, and they had to measure
resistance, voltage, and current and compare the measured value,
labeled value, and calculated value (V/I) of each resistor.

Everything worked fine with the twelve Harbor Freight DMMs (on sale
for $1.99 each) until some of the kids had them set to DC current and
touched them to the + and - of the two batteries. That blew the
internal 500mA GMA fuse, and the current measurement function no
longer worked. I finally replaced all the blown fuses http://
www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/GMA-05/1/2-AMP-MINI-FUSE//1.html
but had I bought fuses locally I would have paid about $1 per fuse.

I wanted to donate the whole set-up to the school, after all, they
paid for it all, but they weren't interested. So I have the whole
thing in a bin in the shed waiting for someone that wants it.

For basic household use those meters are just fine, you don't need
super high accuracy for most tasks.