A - Low cost programmers are adequate if you cannot afford the capability and features of a quality instrument. Manufacturers of low cost programmers have made price their primary product goal. To achieve a low cost they are forced to omit important features and expansion capability which tends to limit the product's useful life. Many low cost programmers use a card which must be installed in the host machine.
Card based programmers use the power supply in the host computer to save cost.
If the card fails, the computer itself can be damaged. To save money a low cost programmer will use software timing loops to generate programming signals. This prevents the programmer from working reliably with operating systems like Windows 3.1 or 95. We feel that when you purchase an instrument you are entitled to both operational and technical documentation. With a low cost programmer your documentation is a disk file.