DAQ cards and signal conditioning?

[pHaestus]

I am in the process of setting up a data acquisition system at work and am going with an NI DAQ card to do the measurements rather than several instruments and a scanner. I was advised by NI that for readings in the mV range that the DAQ cards were not all that reliable and that signal conditioners should be used to amplify the reading to the V scale before sending to DAQ card. I know a few of you guys are looking at/using DAQ cards in your test systems: do you do this?

It adds a huge expense to the data acquisition: DAQ card is ~ $400CAD but so is the signal conditioning box/pcb and every 2 channel module (TCs require 2 channels). So for measurement of 6 mV scale electrodes and 2 temperatures we are looking at ~$2400CAD for signal conditioning along with the $400 DAQ card. Makes me contemplate a DMM + scanner actually...