"nestork" wrote in message ...

I agree with the advice that's telling Jennifer to buy a cheap
multimeter.

As DIY'ers, we seldom really measure anything other than voltage, and
most times we're only concerned about whether it's there or not, and
whether it's 24 VAC, 120 VAC or 240 VAC we're measuring.

I would tell Jennifer to buy a cheap multimeter than has a beeper to
indicate continuity.

All of this other stuff, like measuring capacitance, is something a
person rarely needs to do, and in those few cases, they can always take
the capacitor to a trade school electronics instructor or any
electronics repair shop to get them to measure it.

Fluke meters are great, but a lot of what you're paying for is the fact
that they read true RMS voltage, which takes a little bit of electronic
circuitry that a $10 meter doesn't have. But, the number of times where
I've actually needed to measure true RMS voltage I can count on one
finger. 99.9 % of the time we just want to know if there's voltage
there, and if so, whether it's 24 VAC, 120 VAC or 240 VAC. You don't
need the electronic wizardry that a Fluke meter would provide for that.

Not caring about true RMS at the time, I got this meter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtmtSyx5Yjg

I scored price wise on it (under 30). Would have preferred replacing my
fried Fluke, but spur of the moment need and almost 400 bucks difference
in price made the decision easy. I miss the milliamp driver, but cannot
say that I have a true need for that any time soon.