I said: And the false economy of building cables in-house to "save money"

synergyThe Funny thing is... I have a hard time agreeing with this.

Most people who build their own cables do!

It's a pain in the ass to do, but I'll trust my cables a hell of a lot more than the prebuilts. I primarily use pre-builts, but whenever there is a possible cabling issue, I'll crimp my own to make sure. Now, I've got a hell of a lot of experience in doing these, and don't recommend just anyone doing it, but......

Actually, I honestly *can* see you trusting your own over prebuilts. What I've seen a lot of, though, is IT staff at budget-challenged institutions crimping cables during down-time out of Cat 5 leftovers thinking that they were being good citizens (of course, they didn't have a budget for a cable tester, either) and then wasting huge amounts of time later troubleshooting over these "free" patch cables. Given my crimping skills, give me a cable built by somebody who shucks 5 per minute -- maybe even with a molded strain relief or hood thrown in -- is pre-tested and that costs 4 bucks. Then if any doubt, throw it out.

Now, thinking about it, I don't trust anyone else's in-house cables, so maybe...

Yup!