TITAM - Technical issues that affected me

I've been using my new Mastech MS8218 DMM for a while now.  I've been quite happy with it.  Fantastic value for a $199 meter, no worries at all.  Much better investment for me right now than an 87-V or 189.   I wanted to use my shiny new toy for datalogging, so I installed the Mastech DMM Viewer on my old laptop.  It all installed fine, but the viewer software wouldn't connect to the DMM.  The error was a Visual Basic one, "Run-time error 8002: invalid port number".  Good old VB. Solution reproduced here is from the Power Hungry Performance forum (copied without permission, hope nobody minds): "The issue is related to an inherent port limiting problem with the Windows COM control. It has the nasty habit of only allowing enumeration of 16 COM ports in Visual Basic. When you installed your USB drivers, it enumerated an emulated serial port and assigned it a port number higher than 16. To correct this perform the following: Go to Device Manager...

Having recently set up my own little electronics design consultancy, I eventually (and inevitably) found myself needing some test equipment. (Actually, I managed to survive for several months without even 'basic' equipment - such is the life these days, where most of the work is done on CAD tools and not in real life.  If you're thinking of stepping out on your own, don't assume you'll need $10k of seed money just for tools - or, at least, not right away.) My desire, of course, was naturally to get some of the Fluke tools that I'd used in the past.  The 189 is a lovely meter, and having worked with Fluke (the company) and Fluke tools (the meters) before, I know they are top-notch.  Unfortunately, they command top-notch prices as well.  $900 for a Fluke 289 is not in my budget right now. Being a curious sort, I ended up researching this topic, and soon ran across Mastech (www.p-mastech.com) and their line of 'high-end' meters for low-end prices.  Th...