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Blowing $90 on a useless diagnostic tool
I bought one of those all-in-one USB voltage testers from a guy at a flea market last spring, thinking it would save me time on power supply checks. Turned out the readings were off by like 0.4 volts, and I wasted a whole Saturday chasing a fake issue on a customer's Dell. Anyone else get burned by a cheap tool that seemed like a good deal?
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the_laura6d ago
Oh man, that 0.4 volt ghost could haunt you forever. Nothing like chasing your tail for hours only to find out the tester itself is the liar. 90 bucks for that kind of grief feels like paying for a membership to the wrong club. Probably the same guy who sold me a "military grade" multimeter that died after three uses.
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val9746d ago
@the_laura at least your ghost had a voltage, mine was just an open ground that turned out to be my own bad eyesight on the wiring diagram.
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kim_mason556d ago
lol I gotta disagree with you here. That 0.4 volt ghost wasn't the tester's fault, it was operator error for not checking the calibration first. My uncle ran a shop for 30 years and he always said cheap testers just tell you cheap lies. You paid 90 bucks for a lesson on why you don't trust a budget meter on a live circuit. Military grade just means it was built by the lowest bidder, same as everything else.
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