Martin--We appreciate your leaving the spelling correction to us human editors. We need the job security.

While I agree that it can be annoying to have things happen automatically, it can also simplify things and remove some of the "human element" problems that I have encountered. Having developed some smart sensor systems, I have found that being "smart" can be very helpful, but it also needs to "tell me" when it''s being smart and allow me to "override" its cleverness. After all, a happy life is all about balance.

So, Microsoft Office tries to "correct" your spelling. That's the price you pay for having (and using) something higher than a fifth-grade vocabulary! The auto-correction mode is totally inadequate for writers in technical and engineering fields. The automatic capitalization after abbreviations it doesn't recognize, and miniaturized fonts for SOME fractions need a simple override!

And how annoying is that when your ATM card gets too smart and cuts off your funds while in Vegas?

Maybe we ought to take a step back and look at the intended applications of the "smart" equipment. As a metrologist, I deal with all levels of test equipment automation. I figure we need to leave the automation to the lame and lazy. I''''ve wasted more time correcting "automatic corrections" than I have on my mistakes. Anyway... When a customer tells me to put the settings on a piece back the way I found them because their "tech won''''t know how to set them back"... I wonder if we''''re putting our trust in the right people by calling them "technicians" and giving them equipment that can do the "technical" stuff for them.

Stop whining,and do it right the first time...

I believe we are in the middle of some fundemental changes in how we perform measurements. More and more, traditional test is being moved to onboard diagnostics. I believe we are also seeing a trend toward operational testing and smart sensors for data acq applications. The systems are becoming more complex and communications bandwidth loaded. I believe the proper answer is to be downloading a lot of the processing to the sensor and/or collection nodes. I believe need to be doing a better job by performing low level analysis and passing the application processed information rather than data.

We must develop better methods of providing standard ways of specifying and retrieving this information. I believe this is the next logical step.

Jay Nemeth-Johannes, CTO, Smart Sensor Systems

NO! There should be a help area or prompts for a "smart" level. It is forever aggravating to try to measure DC volts and a DMM keeps switching to AC volts because of noise.

I think that all new test equipment should include a equipment "user" manual as part of the instrument that can be downloaded to a computer. I am forever misplacing the user manuals or they get permanently borrowed...making complex instrumentation tough to use to its full capabilities. Memory is so cheap these days that this should be a fairly easy item to include. The online manual should include such items as system specifications, calibration info, POCs for questions, waranty information, etc. I also think that test equipmant should come with a "smart" self test (BIST) capability.

A possible future test instrument capability might allow users to change internal functions of test equipment via software manipulations to meet different testing needs