Use of ESI (Empty Skill Implants)

I was shocked, so I tought I would share the information with you all... hope you can avoid the noob tax that I got stung with.

When you transfer skills to an ESI, and you only use part of it, the info says that you will either get the difference back as a smaller ESI or as PED.

I bought 2 small ESIs (10 - 11 ped) off the auction at slightly below market, but still over 900%.
Having transfered a small amount of skills onto them I had PED (TT value) returned to me both times.
I deduced that there must be some minimum value (around 10 ped) under which PED is returned (on the basis that if you were gonna spend 2k on a big ESI you wouldn't want to risk losing it all).

So I bought a slightly larger ESI (15.32 PED) and managed to extract 3 skills, all returning new ESIs down to 11.66 PED, where I bottled out and relisted it on the auction, for slightly less than market... and it sold immediately.

Here are the stats (if you are interrested)

• ESI Value - Skill - Extracted - Lost - Lost % - Skills on Chip - TT Val Chip -*-
• 15.32 - Manf Armour - 255 - 17 - 7% - 238 - 0.34 -*-
• 14.94 - Clubs - 303 - 22 - 7% - 281 - 0.43 -*-
• 14.45 - Prospecting - 900 - 57 - 6% - 843 - 2.51 -*-
• 11.66

I found a nice post with approximations of how much of an ESI is used by how many skills...

http://www.entropiatools.com/numchips.php

And here is some more of my results.

• ESI Value - Skill - Extracted - Lost - Lost % - Skills on Chip - TT Val Chip
• 17.1 - Color Matching - 18 - 8 - 44% - 10 - 0.1
• 17.07 - Make Textile - 84 - 8 - 10% - 76 - 0.9
• 16.96 - Tailoring - 35 - 7 - 20% - 28 - 0.3
• 16.91 - Coloring - 40 - 3 - 8% - 37 - 0.4
• 16.86 - Electronics - 275 - 15 - 5% - 260 - 0.38
• 16.43 - Surveying - 819 - 66 - 8% - 753 - 2.19
• 13.99 - Armour Technology - 113 - 12 - 11% - 101 - 0.12
• 13.84 - Light Melee Weapons - 443 - 20 - 5% - 423 - 0.84
• 12.89 - Machinery - 86 - 8 - 9% - 78 - 0.09
• 12.78