Comedy : The race to zero and why we should never be surprised by crap

I may have mentioned it a month ago, but to remind you, my invisible people, I ordered a quite well-researched cheapest multimeter from the far off lands, the price, including shipping, was just four dollars and seventy four cents of our Canadian money, I was curious, how bad could a multimeter that costs about the same as a deluxe coffee actually be?

I researched it, sort of, and ordered it, and waited...and waited....

It arrived, they mostly do, from the far off lands, and it weighed, well, it weighed very little. No ballast to make the thing seem real, but oddly, once a battery was inserted, which still made the thing appear to be lighter than air, the product seemed to do most things that it was supposed to do.

Most things.

No fuse, no beeps, very questionable triode detection. It was obvious when removing the back cover to place the nine volt battery that there was neither a fuse, nor a beeper unit and if you look at that ring of 8 holes for the transistor testing, well, you can understand why the three prongs of an NPN or PNP would have difficulty making contact all at the same time. However, to temper my rage I looked at the original listing and saw that neither a fuse or a buzzer were promised, the wording, the reviews, all pointed to the glaring fact that this was potentially a death trap that had no bells or whistles.

I know enough stuff about electrical things now to be dangerous, so looking at the above photo I can point out the shocking detail of the no fuse, where perhaps a fuse should be, so the question then would be, how would this little miracle react to bad things happening in the real world, and the answer perhaps does not require any training in rocket science.

The two main probe contacts, bottom left, well they are extremely close for potential arc points when high voltage AC or DC are applied and when installing the battery it actually pushes them closer, so there is one dangerous point of failure, another would be one of those many surface mount resistors, a mystical point of magic smoke when you jam one of the inadequate, poor quality, probes into an AC outlet. In essence, there is a fuse, just not one you can replace...

What do I know, what do I care, I cannot even buy a pint of beer any more for the price, and this little, lightweight, wonder can be used to check "little" things and can perhaps be used as a sacrificial multimeter when I do not wish to risk a higher price unit, after all, a replacement fuse on a good quality Fluke meter would probably cost twice what this little hampster costeded.

I will admit though, when I opened the package from the far off lands, my first reaction was to immediately send this to the e-waste depot, but you know, with a little time, you realise that you do get what you pay for, and if you pay next to nothing, you get next to nothing.  

I subsequently sold the little meter, I included it in a small toolbox of spare, useless, parts. It was interesting to hold and play with such a poor little multimeter, and in my research along the way, I have discovered that the terrible internals of this type of meter are sold in many different ways by our far off friends, perhaps it is in their interests to electrocute us all.

Ok, now I have rid my world of that sordid little thing, I should go and buy another....