OT Skoda Octavia Electronics Problem

My Skoda Octavia diesel displayed a fault on the dash showing a fault with the pre-heaters. An owed favour gave me an electronic read out saving me a lot of money that the fault was my brake lights. The lights didn't work & a quick test showed that the fuse hadn't blown & the bulbs were OK. I had the switch changed (not easy) & all was OK. I told this to a mechanic I use for other things & he told me he had obtained a small readout that let you read the stored faults for less than £10. As the full tester costs thousands of pounds this sounds like a usefull purchase for the average punter. Does anyone know of a supplier of these & how good are they?

Official one here: http://www.vagproducts.co.uk/vchecker.html
Cheaper ones on Fleabay such as item 370107862589
No experience of these. I've been thinking of getting one for my Skoda. If you get a cheap one make sure it can cope with CAN-Bus.
Russell.

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There should indeed be scope here for returning the maintenance of motor vehicles back into the hands of Sunday-morning dabblers!
I'm confident that we all have computer power to spare in our PCs of today.
ISTR that such a unit should work on all cars that have got the latest standard interface fitted (Things were not always the same; ISTR the "K" line which used a PWM protocol)
So, where do we go to gain information about each car. I'd imagine the actual computer programming required to be straightforward.

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You need VAG-COM software and a special cable for your laptop for full access to the systems including ABS, central locking, radio etc. OBD11 software will only access the engine management system. You can download a restricted shareware version of the VAG-COM software here: http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/index.html
Russell.