Volume only works if you are making a margin. If its small then even small amounts of support take you into loss. Sure
you can provide some real support for guys buying 100 units for a large lab, because its spread across all those units. You can't do much more than provide basic warranty support, and downloadable material for people buying one.
With volume I didn't talk about if a single buyer buys one or 100 scopes, volume is over a production run. In the big picture it does not matter much if you sell 100k units to 100k customers where each one only buys a single item, or one buyer who buys all units.
And in generall product support is not dependent on how many units an individual customer buys. You don't get better support just because you buy more scopes.
I suppose you do realise that the higher reliability of electronics now versus the 1970s was not driven by
customer satisfaction concerns, but by the crippling cost of repairs within warranty.
That's not true. The higher reliability of modern elecktronics primarily comes from improvements in manufacturing processes (ISO9000 et al), tighter integration, and the move from complex mechanical components (i.e. the rotary switches in old analog scopes) to simpler, contact-less alternatives (i.e. rotary encoders) or to electronic controls (i.e. calibration, old days with potentiometers to modern day parameter stored in a ROM).
Some of these improvements were driven by the intention to cut costs (warranty costs, yes, but mostly production costs), but a big part of it was the natural consequence of technological progress.
But thankfully the major brands do support their products, even long after the warranty period. I'd rather pay a bit more (or save money by buying used kit) than paying money for producing even more shortlived landfill.
If you bought an early Rigol scope you would have seen quite a long period of support by now, because they are still making those early scopes, and the parts are still current.
I'm not up to date with what Rigol does but as far as I'm aware there were several revisions of the DS1000, all with different board layout. The later ones are are obviously still made, but to my knowledge not the earlier revisions. But this aside, support is not when a product is made over a longer period of time. Support is what happens (or doesn't happen) when the product fails.
With Rigol, you can send it in during the warranty period, and they will fix it (obviously). This can take anywhere from a few days to well over a months. You might even get a loaner (apparently they do this for the more expensive scopes, i.e. DS2k and up). However, this is pretty basic.
The question is what happens when the product is out of warranty. Can you send it in for repair? Probably. Can you get spare parts? Siglent seems to sell them while Rigol doesn't. Can you get calibration?
Then there's product maintenance. Will problems be fixed? Just look at the Siglent SDS2k scope which still seems to suffer from a large number of bugs. Will they fix them, some of them, none? Who knows. Same with Rigol. The DS2k did get a lot of bug fixes but what about the DS4k and DS6k which both still suffer from many bugs that have long been fixed for the DS2k?
What about end user support? Does the manufacturer provide help if I have problems with how to use the product? Can I get reliable(!) specifications, and does the manufacturer document the limitations of its product?
There's a lot more to support than just making the product a while longer.
A lot of the perception of long time support for expensive instruments comes from the same thing. The models aren't changing every year.
That's nonsense. As I said before, support has nothing to do with how long the product is available.
Try getting support from the maker just a few years after production stops and see what happens.
What do you think? LeCroy for example fully supports all its scopes for 7 years after the last one of a series is made. After 7 years they still offer "best effort" (because at some point some parts may no longer be available) repair for all their scopes. In fact, they still repair the old 9300 Series scopes for which production stopped in 1998. That was 16 years ago. If I have a problem with my LeCroy scope, even if I'm just not using it correctly, I can talk to one of their application engineers who will spend time to help me to solve the problem - for free. And it doesn't matter if I bought their latest highend scope or just have a old model.
Keysight also supports most of its kit for several years after end of production, aside from other support offerings. So does R&S including Hameg. And TTi. And NI.
Don't know about Tek but they're Danaher now so it may well be that support has seen the same cuts as other parts of Tek.
All those specialised instruments (i.e. Bluetooth 1.0 testers) which aren't flexible enough to move on (e.g. to a Bluetooth 2.0 tester) loose their support very quickly from any maker I know of.
Well, for example the old CATC Bluetooth Protocol Analyzers from LeCroy have been supported until not too long ago (IIRC 2011), and they were made in 2004.
Buy a Tek scope in their end of life sell off of an old model, and you might find support ends quite quickly.
It certainly used to.
As I said before I don't know about Tek as I have no more recent experience with them, as I find their current products unattractive and their sales staff annoying (they must be really desperate).
More China bashing. Get real.
Maybe you missed the memo but these days China is undoubtly the major source of crap. That some stuff like Siglent or Rigol kit is actually very decent doesn't change that the majority of China made and China labelled stuff is just plain crap.
I've nothing against China, and I'm sure at some point in the future the label "Made in China" might even be associated with high quality products as it is today with Japan (which has also started with producting crap). But today they're the major global source of cheap crap.
The experts in crumbling cases just outside warranty are western companies. The Chinese are amateurs at this, although they might be the experts at horribly discolouring plastics.
Not in my experience. I've rarely seen crumbling pastics on products from reputable western companies, but I've seen that often from (careful, here comes "China bashing" again) China. Which isn't a major problem per se as the products usually did cost a few bucks and have to survive for a short time only.
But while I haven't seen much crumbling plastic on western products, I did notice that the overall quality feel of plastic certainly has decreased over the years.
In the late 90s US Robotics got really good at this - a child of JIT manufacture. Their cases starting cracking up just outside warranty.
Funny you mention USR, were I worked we used lots (hundreds) of USR modems (2k4bd to V.90), and while some have seen some physical abuse I can't recall having seen any plastics crumbling as you describe.
The UK is listed as having one of the longest average lifetimes for its houses. I suspect that might be historic, as so many of these string and sealing wax houses and being built now.
The old buildings are indeed of much better build quality, but anything built after the 60's is just awful. I guess the problem is that unlike say Germany (where many people built their own home or have it built after their specification) in the UK large patches of land are sold off to a single developer who then squeezes as many houses as legally possible and at the lowest costs possible onto that land, and then flogs it off.
I guess that's why so many old (100+ years) buildings are still standing.
If you want to see bizarre disposability, come to Asia. People build in steel and concrete (no wood, because of termites) and pull things as young as 10 year old down to build something else.
Just curious, why is that? Is it the climate that affects the buildings, or are they just poorly built?