@Corporate666 what do you like about DP832? What features do you use often? You are swaying me back towards Rigol now. I guess I can live with the spike and always disconnect before powering up. I'm glad you clarified about channel on/off vs PSU power on because I didn't realise that.
Did you short the two common (or was it negative) with a big wire like some other people did?
I had a look at HP6632A - the cheapest one on ebay is $108 + $84 shipping.
I am really busy every day, so for me, having things that work and do what I want is important, since I don't like wasting time working around the quirks of a piece of equipment. I find the DP832 is a great PSU for that reason. I guess the things I like most...
1) It is 3 channel, so I can always have a 3.3V or 5V on channel 3 for my logic, and channel 1 and 2 are both high voltage/high amperage (relative to, say, a 12V or 20V PSU) so I can use those for higher power circuits. Actually most of my stuff runs at 12V-24V but sometimes I am testing bare boards and sometimes boards with wires attached, so I have alligator test leads in channel 1 and probe test leads in channel 2. This is actually a huge time saver for me since I no longer have to keep swapping out my leads depending on if I am testing panelized boards or finished boards. Using probe leads in the power supply allows me to apply power to test pads on boards very easily
2) The voltage and current settings are very accurate and OCP/OVP work very well. I can set the voltage to 5 and current to 0.010A and probe individual LED's on a board to see which ones are working without fear of damage. Then I can turn voltage up to 30 and test a chip-on-board white LED with a voltage of 28 with the same setup and just a few key presses.
3) I use the keypad about 75% of the time to set volts and amps, and the dial 25% of the time. But having both is very good, especially since you can move the cursor on the dial to increment in 1A, 0.1A, 0.01A or 0.001A steps, great for slowly ramping up volts or amps and seeing if things work in your circuit before you turn it on full power
4) A couple of times I have connected the channels in serial to increase voltage... I had an array of siz 9V Cree COB LED's I wanted to test... it was really nice to be able to actually get 54V @ 350mA from this PSU. Ordinarily I would have had to head over to the Sorensen for higher voltage or the Agilent for higher amperage, but the Rigol can put out enough of both that I only end up using the others for specialized testing (Sorensen is 150V/10A, Agilent will do 20V/120A). I had a nice Philips programmable PSU that I pretty much never use anymore.
I did not bother shorting the negatives with a big wire... honestly, that's one of those things where I think a lot of people complain too much about it. Most people won't use both positives with one negative and also be in a situation where the voltage drop is mission critical. If you are, well, just use an interconnect between negatives... or just install it from the get-go and no longer worry about it. Some PSU's come with this from the factory - so it's not a hack IMO, it's just something Rigol should have included in the box.
I also like that the PSU has a lot of other features I could use if I wanted... like monitoring circuits over time, external control, being able to make programs/scripts for testing and all of that. I'll probably never really use it, but it's nice to know it's there if I ever do.
At the end of the day - the heat issue is fixed, the common-negatives issue is a trivial solution, so what really are the issues with the DP832? I think it is just one - a small and low energy power spike at initial power on. Well, I have other PSU's that do the same thing... honestly, anyone passing over this PSU for that reason is a fool. I think there is a lot of irrational indignation among engineers, as if Rigol somehow betrayed or cheated them on this PSU... so they buy old clunky PSU's with 1/10th the features and capabilities just so they can pride themselves on it not having any flaws. Personally, I'd rather have a Lamborghini that has a quirk where the washer fluid light comes on as I operate the windshield washer than a 1988 Honda Civic that everything works correctly in. But to each their own
All I can tell you is that I have a bunch of PSU's, some of which were a lot more expensive than the DP832, and on the shelf above my desk with the leads always attached and usually powered on is my DP832. Then I have a rolling cart with 5 other "high end" PSU's that I only ever plug in if I need something specific.
If you have the $$$ available, buy the DP832 and something else from somewhere and see which you like better - then return the one you don't like. I'd bet my bottom dollar you'd keep the 832.