well, I never thought this would go more than a page.
I did not think the subject was that emotive.
I really appreciate the responses, nothing like real world experience.
I hate having to probe my circuit and then look up on the instrument rack to get the reading, it's annoying. Much better to sit your handheld meter next to your circuit and just glance sideways slightly.
For me that is the one major advantage that a handheld has on the bench is that one can position it, so that a glance is all that is needed to see the display. I have more than once fried something because I had to crane my head around something to see the meter.
It looks likely that I'll get an Agilent 1252 handheld. Not sure whether the A or B. The only diff I can see is the colour and back-light. I'm leaning towards the A, as I'm not sure about that orange back-light. The A looks more blue/white in the pics. Unfortunately the closet agent in Sydney has only the A in stock and I am a bit too far south to go there without seeing both. Seems most of their stock in in Adelaide. Anyway the 1252 has a lot of features. Plus it is currently, substantially cheaper than a Fluke 87V from the local Aussie Distributor. I like the 87V, but a diff of over AU$300 swings it Agilent's way.
I will see how we go with the 1252. Hopefully the 36hr battery life will not be an issue for me, shouldn't be as I won't use it everyday. I can then relegate the old meter to the car toolkit.
Btw, here's one for the Fluke fans. A while back a couple of the guys at work were installing some Cisco DWDM optical networking kit. Something was up with one of the power supplies, so they decided to check the voltage on the input connector to the device. These things have redundant power supplies, which put out 48V, 3KW capacity I think. Anyway they managed to short out the power connector with the meter probes. Big flash, and most of the probe was gone along with half the Vcc connector on the cable. The Fluke survived, sans probe, and being thrown halfway across a data center in fright. Very funny since I was not holding the meter or the cable. Just lucky it was only 48V. No electrical or electronic experience mind, these were network dudes.
Cheers
Robin