Emergency help. Scope purchase.

[Wuerstchenhund]

It's foolish to assume HW and SW are completely decoupled from one other.   I agree that Siglent can build decent "HW", but I would never assume that LeCroy can work around all HW issues.  I would not put Iwatsu and Siglent in the same class at this point, Siglent is still learning. 

That may well be, but for the WS2k Siglent merely acts as the manufacturer, the design is predominantly LeCroy, as is the software.

I also saw issues with SDS2000 intensity grading as well as the waveform corruption I mentioned earlier.  Siglent has no concept of intensity grading a static waveform through compression as you zoom in /out.   Are these issues all SW?  I doubt it.

The issues with the SDS2000 are clearly software issues, not a hardware problem. Intensity grading on these scopes is done in software. Unless you can point to specifics there isn't something generally wrong with the hardware of that scope.

Is Siglent designing fpga or LeCroy? I would think Siglent if they own the HW.  In which case cross your fingers.

Again. the SDS3000 is a LeCroy design, but even if it wasn't there's no evidence that Siglent designed hardware would be inferior.

I saw enough negative things with SDS2000 that a partnership between Siglent and LeCroy means very little at this point other than a cost saving measure.

   

Of course it's a cost-saving measure. So what? Even Tek has their low end stuff produced in China. There's no way LeCroy could offer such a scope at that price when it's made in the US or in Europe.

But that doesn't mean they won't keep their fingers on it to make sure the quality isn't up to scratch. Siglent, like any ODM, will produce exactly the quality the customer orders. The SDS2000 is a Siglent-owned product, so they are doing all the development for it and they decide on the price point and the quality of components going into the scope. It's silly to assume that ODMs like Siglent will apply the same decision to equipment which is specified by their customers.

Plus the WS 3000 maui interface looks pretty stripped down and somewhat archaic.  Not sure if they are performance limited on HW side or this is just how the existing GUI api's on the embedded windows looks. If you are used to xstream you will be dissapointed with the eye candy (or maybe pleased if you find GUI is excessive / in your face on xstream).

The UI looks simpler because the WS3000 uses Windows 7 Embedded which is only a subset of a full Windows 7 installation. It doesn't have a hard drive, you can't access the Windows desktop, and it lacks graphical sweeteners like Aero. It also doesn't run the full X-Stream package but a cut-down variant which is more appropriate to the limited ressources in this scope. That means however the UI looks a bit simpler than on the full-size X-Stream scopes.

Just because you can't use simultaneous SA and scope does not make the feature silly or a gimmick. 

I didn't say it's a gimmick. But it's obviously not the revolution Tek seems to claim it is, and the fact that only scope or SA can be used at the same time is a limitation. In addition, the SA in the MDO3k and MDO4k is not quite the same as a sweeping SA like the Rigol DSA815 as the MDO3k/4k use I-Q capture and FFT (the same principle as employed by signal analyzers like the old Agilent E4406B which these days often can be found for a few hundred quid), which means there's also no tracking generator.

The basic MDO3000 isn't that expensive and when Tek offered the 3GHz SA bandwidth upgrade for free it was certainly a very attractive deal if the combination of features was what one was looking for and if the limitations presented no issues. But when the SA in the basic scope is limited to the scope's analog bandwidth and the 3GHz upgrade is roughly 3/4 of the price of another MDO3000 then the story gets a bit different.

I guess I'm not the only one seeing it this way, as Tek's current situation shows. They're not exactly bursting with scope orders.

I would have to take inventory, but at least a few with OS problems (one says license is bogus and chooses to ignore anything we input), and a couple that just hang when the scope is up.

The license thing usually only happens if a Windows version that isn't supported by the scope is installed (i.e. Vista or W7 on a XP or W2k scope, X-Stream then comes up with an error message at startup saying that the software isn't licensed on that scope).

A hanging scope can be caused by a range of things but often it's just a depleted backup battery.

All of these issues should be easily fixable by LeCroy Support.

And plenty with missing knobs of course.

This must be very old scopes then as falling off knobs stopped being an issue when LeCroy introduced the WaveRunner2 and WavePro 900 where they changed the knob design. But the previous scopes were really notorious for it.

There was also a short period when the WaveRunner 6zi was introduced where on the first production runs the "Superknob" was falling off, but again this was fixed quickly by LeCroy.
   

It definitley did.  I used I2C on an 8zi I believe, with segmented memory and some search operations, cursors, zoom and maybe a math.  It was so slow.

Well, the combination you listed there can include quite a bit of stuff which is extremely processing heavy. Don't forget that the WaveMaster 8zi can produce more than 80Gbyte in data per second. That's quite a large amount to process for what essentially is a Core 2 Quad processor.

I basically had to set it up and tell the person I was working with to let it do it's thing.  Zooming was painful and cursoring was jumpy.  I'm not saying this is the norm - likely is not.  The contrary actually, it's a nice scope.

It is. But the beef I have with LeCroy is that they often tend to skimp on processing. Yes, the architecture is great, but when they put a low end processor in a $30k+ highend scope then it gets a bit ridiculous. Thankfully these problems are easily solvable, and the current zi-A Series is much better.

But Tek gets dinged for being slow when it's no different than high end scopes with deep memory.

Tek gets dinged for being slow with low sample rates and small memory and primitive maths when other scopes only get slow when processing large amounts of data captured at high sample rates and stored in large sample memories while doing complex maths operations, which is not quite the same. The MDO3k/4k Series might not be as bad but on other Tek scopes using it feels like wading through molasses.

I think Agilent 3000x series with limited memory brain-washed the general population into thinking all scopes should be as responsive even though it's doing most of the calculations on screen vs. waveform with minimal memory.

Keysights DSO-X 2k/3k Series were designed with a high waveform update rate as priority, mainly for marketing as differentiator I guess but when you consider that many users of these scopes come from analog scopes I can see that there's some merit in how these scopes work. The other side of course is that memory management is automatized and that manual interventions in what the scope does are limited. It's probably fine for the intended target audience.

A few people may be spoiled by Agilents waveform update rate claims but I don't think that is generally an issue. The problem with Tek isn't the waveform rate, the problem with Tek is the slow UI and often sluggish operation which can't even be cancelled by the user. The thing is that the Agilent scope feels pretty slick, and this is not just because of the update rate. The same is true for the Rigol scopes I've seen (although they can be painfully slow in FFT). But I've yet to see a Tek scope where the same is true.

[don]

That may well be, but for the WS2k Siglent merely acts as the manufacturer, the design is predominantly LeCroy, as is the software.

WS2k or WS3k?  I don't think there is a WS2k and assume you mean ws3k.  Regardless, "predominantly LeCroy" means not 100% lecroy and hence no guarantee of expected lecroy quality. 

The issues with the SDS2000 are clearly software issues, not a hardware problem. Intensity grading on these scopes is done in software. Unless you can point to specifics there isn't something generally wrong with the hardware of that scope.

How can you be  so sure there is no hardware component involved in issues?  Do you consider fpga HW or SW?  For the purposes here, the question is who owns fpga design in wavesurfer 3000 which we clearly do not know. 

Of course it's a cost-saving measure. So what? Even Tek has their low end stuff produced in China. There's no way LeCroy could offer such a scope at that price when it's made in the US or in Europe.

But that doesn't mean they won't keep their fingers on it to make sure the quality isn't up to scratch. Siglent, like any ODM, will produce exactly the quality the customer orders. The SDS2000 is a Siglent-owned product, so they are doing all the development for it and they decide on the price point and the quality of components going into the scope. It's silly to assume that ODMs like Siglent will apply the same decision to equipment which is specified by their customers.

   

I think you are confusing contract manufacturer with ODM. 

Take Apple phones.  Foxconn is the contract manufacturer.  They have zero input on the design (with the exception of manufacturing assembly efficiency which translates to cost) and only know enough about the design to verify they assembled the product correctly through test verification. Would apple let foxconn put their name on the phone and sell in china?  No way.

Take Tektronix.  They have a a contract manufacturer in china as well to assemble oscilloscopes.  Does that contract manufacturer design any aspect of the scope?  Nope.  Same as apple.

Take LeCroy.  If Siglent is the contract manufacturer, do you think lecroy would let siglent put their name on it?  Again, no way.  Why would they?  Siglent is likely and ODM to LeCroy, which means they own a part of the design.  To say that they will meet Lecroy's quality goals is true, but do not underestimate the effort it takes to specify every aspect of a design to ensure the quality you desire.  And then guess what?   You just trained an ODM everything you know and they can do this on their own moving foward and you just created a competitor.  It's a slippery slope and the practicality of it says that the quality usually suffers, not transfer of too much IP.

 
It definitley did.  I used I2C on an 8zi I believe, with segmented memory and some search operations, cursors, zoom and maybe a math.  It was so slow.

Well, the combination you listed there can include quite a bit of stuff which is extremely processing heavy. Don't forget that the WaveMaster 8zi can produce more than 80Gbyte in data per second. That's quite a large amount to process for what essentially is a Core 2 Quad processor.

Fair enough if 80GB/s is correct, but it would be silly to judge a scope only on this use case, correct?

Tek gets dinged for being slow with low sample rates and small memory and primitive maths when other scopes only get slow when processing large amounts of data captured at high sample rates and stored in large sample memories while doing complex maths operations, which is not quite the same. The MDO3k/4k Series might not be as bad but on other Tek scopes using it feels like wading through molasses.

That's not true.  Tek is only slow in the same use cases you said other scopes slow down in.   It's very responsive with pan / zoom / cursor even at full record length.  Add math functions and it slows to initially process, but that's it.  I just don't understand the discrepancy when comparing scope A to scope B.  The 8zi can be both speedy and a slug depending on what you are doing, same for higher end Agilent's and same for Tek scopes.  But to say all Tek's are slow with the possible exception of MDO3/4 series is not a fair statement and clearly stacked to support bias towards brand A and against brand B.

[Howardlong]

I'd agree with that, after all, how ever did we cope only a few short years ago? Sure it's a convenience, but you also have to also ask yourself how much is "enough"? One meg? Ten meg? One gig?

More memory helps to avoid having to setup complicated triggers. Recently I used my MSO to debug a project involving driving a TFT display from a CPLD. I just captured 2 frames of video data and zoom in on the problem area. Having over 10Mpoints of data makes that easy.

I agree, but is it value for money? Like I already stated, it's a convenience. And I too have been in a similar position where having a 128Mpt memory has been useful (although only to find the serial decode would only work on the first 32Mpt). But it wasn't like I couldn't work around it.

So is having all that memory worth a potentially four figure sum considering the number of times you really need it and the usually small amount effort involved in working around it?

IMHO, the question of how much deep more you need is a bit like posing the question "how long is a piece of string?".

[don]

I'd agree with that, after all, how ever did we cope only a few short years ago? Sure it's a convenience, but you also have to also ask yourself how much is "enough"? One meg? Ten meg? One gig?

More memory helps to avoid having to setup complicated triggers. Recently I used my MSO to debug a project involving driving a TFT display from a CPLD. I just captured 2 frames of video data and zoom in on the problem area. Having over 10Mpoints of data makes that easy.

I agree, but is it value for money? Like I already stated, it's a convenience. And I too have been in a similar position where having a 128Mpt memory has been useful (although only to find the serial decode would only work on the first 32Mpt). But it wasn't like I couldn't work around it.

So is having all that memory worth a potentially four figure sum considering the number of times you really need it and the usually small amount effort involved in working around it?

IMHO, the question of how much deep more you need is a bit like posing the question "how long is a piece of string?".

Debug is all about time vs. money.  If your job does not need it or you have the time to make due with shallow memory then it doesn't make sense to spend the money.   But we'll never have enough memory, enough speed, etc.  The more capable a HW platform is then the more it will be pushed to the limits by integrating more features and deeper memory depth, and the more we'll realize how much easier debug can be.  I usually run my scopes at max memory.  I deal with non-periodic signals that have a lot of events, so I generally want to capture as much as I can with good resolution to see what is going on.  But if I only dealt with periodic waveforms it would be a different story and I would not consider memory depth a critical feature.

[tautech]

The issues with the SDS2000 are clearly software issues, not a hardware problem. Intensity grading on these scopes is done in software. Unless you can point to specifics there isn't something generally wrong with the hardware of that scope.

How can you be  so sure there is no hardware component involved in issues?  Do you consider fpga HW or SW?  For the purposes here, the question is who owns fpga design in wavesurfer 3000 which we clearly do not know.

 
A clue to this is displayed in the Siglent SDS3000 is an acknowledgement in a footer on screen: Powered by Teldyne/LeCroy.

Of course it's a cost-saving measure. So what? Even Tek has their low end stuff produced in China. There's no way LeCroy could offer such a scope at that price when it's made in the US or in Europe.

But that doesn't mean they won't keep their fingers on it to make sure the quality isn't up to scratch. Siglent, like any ODM, will produce exactly the quality the customer orders. The SDS2000 is a Siglent-owned product, so they are doing all the development for it and they decide on the price point and the quality of components going into the scope. It's silly to assume that ODMs like Siglent will apply the same decision to equipment which is specified by their customers.

   

I think you are confusing contract manufacturer with ODM. 

Take Apple phones.  Foxconn is the contract manufacturer.  They have zero input on the design (with the exception of manufacturing assembly efficiency which translates to cost) and only know enough about the design to verify they assembled the product correctly through test verification. Would apple let foxconn put their name on the phone and sell in china?  No way.

Take Tektronix.  They have a a contract manufacturer in china as well to assemble oscilloscopes.  Does that contract manufacturer design any aspect of the scope?  Nope.  Same as apple.

Take LeCroy.  If Siglent is the contract manufacturer, do you think lecroy would let siglent put their name on it?  Again, no way.  Why would they?  Siglent is likely and ODM to LeCroy, which means they own a part of the design.  To say that they will meet Lecroy's quality goals is true, but do not underestimate the effort it takes to specify every aspect of a design to ensure the quality you desire.  And then guess what?   You just trained an ODM everything you know and they can do this on their own moving foward and you just created a competitor.  It's a slippery slope and the practicality of it says that the quality usually suffers, not transfer of too much IP.

Exactly.
And we have already seen a new DSO offering from Siglent revealed at the Munich show.

[Mark_O]

Exactly.
And we have already seen a new DSO offering from Siglent revealed at the Munich show.

That is true. 

Unfortunately, it makes me wonder how many of their software development engineers are hard at work bringing that newer model DSO to life.  I.e., the one's who were initially responsible for the SDS2000-series.  It's pretty obvious with the slow rate of improvements of critical pieces of functionality there, and the long time between (small) bug-fix releases, that Siglent's resources must be slim, and have been mostly allocated elsewhere. 

The A-team has moved on, and the B-team (maybe just a couple guys) is left trying to pick up the pieces, fix the bugs, and finish the promised functionality.  Which is a real shame, IMO.

[tautech]

Exactly.
And we have already seen a new DSO offering from Siglent revealed at the Munich show.

That is true. 

Unfortunately, it makes me wonder how many of their software development engineers are hard at work bringing that newer model DSO to life.  I.e., the one's who were initially responsible for the SDS2000-series.  It's pretty obvious with the slow rate of improvements of critical pieces of functionality there, and the long time between (small) bug-fix releases, that Siglent's resources must be slim, and have been mostly allocated elsewhere. 

The A-team has moved on, and the B-team (maybe just a couple guys) is left trying to pick up the pieces, fix the bugs, and finish the promised functionality.  Which is a real shame, IMO.

Yes we feel the frustration too.
I know there is further  for options being worked on, but at least they gave us something for Xmas, we hoped for more though.

[nctnico]

IMHO Siglent better fixes the SDS2000 fast otherwise they can just quit making mid-range oscilloscopes. They are releasing too much new test equipment without finishing their existing equipment.  At this moment I'm seriously considering replacing my SDS2000 within the next couple of months (probably with a hefty loss). This thread has listed some very interesting alternatives.

[nctnico]

I wouldn't run to LeCroy too fast. The low range of their equipment isn't very well equiped. You'll find the products from Keysight have more possibilities regarding protocol decoding. The MSOX3024A looks nice as well.

[Wuerstchenhund]

I wouldn't run to LeCroy too fast. The low range of their equipment isn't very well equiped.

I agree. LeCroy's low end selection (WaveAce) is pure and simple crap. These are rebadged Siglent SDS1000CML/CFL scopes running Siglent firmware and coming with Siglent bugs. The CML are ok for the few hundred dollars the Siglent originals are sold but at the price LeCroy is calling for the WaveAce it's an embarrassment.

The next step up is the WaveJet, which is a rebadged Iwatsu which per se isn't a bad scope, but it's specs are outdated and (as with the WaveAce) it's absolutely overpriced.

This changed starting with the WaveSurfer Series, though, which is the lower limit where one gets a 'real' LeCroy with all the goodies one would expect from that brand.

You'll find the products from Keysight have more possibilities regarding protocol decoding. The MSOX3024A looks nice as well.

Yes, the MSOX3k has more decoding options. But that's about it. It's an old design with limited functionality and meager 4Mpts of memory. As a debug scope it simply can't keep up with the WaveSurfer 3000, which already offers advanced functionality like WaveScan which simply has no equivalent in Keysight's offering.

The WS3000 is pretty new, and like with other scopes LeCroy will expand the decode capabilities of that scope over time.

[Wuerstchenhund]

WS2k or WS3k?  I don't think there is a WS2k and assume you mean ws3k.  Regardless, "predominantly LeCroy" means not 100% lecroy and hence no guarantee of expected lecroy quality. 

WS3k of course (you just found one of my many typos). I can understand that you're cautious, especially when looking how LeCroy messed up their low end with buggy Siglent rebadges. But the truth is that a large part of all LeCroy scopes ever made were actually made in a same way as the WS3k - as cooperative designs.

The issues with the SDS2000 are clearly software issues, not a hardware problem. Intensity grading on these scopes is done in software. Unless you can point to specifics there isn't something generally wrong with the hardware of that scope.

How can you be  so sure there is no hardware component involved in issues?

Because all low end scopes do intensity grading in software. There's no hardware for that in them.

Do you consider fpga HW or SW? For the purposes here, the question is who owns fpga design in wavesurfer 3000 which we clearly do not know.

LeCroy doesn't own most of the FPGA designs outside the acquisition system in most of their scopes. For example, in the WavePro 7k there are several FPGAs which are simply bought-in from a 3rd party. The same is true in the WaveMaster 8zi and probably any other LeCroy scope. So what?

You're fixated to much on who 'owns' what component in these scopes, which is leading nowhere. There's very little doubt that Siglent can produce very good hardware. With all their own products (not just the SDS2000), it's always the software part that sucks. However, in the development of the WaveSurfer 3000 LeCroy has the overarching control, because, unlike the shitty low-end WaveAce Series for which they don't really care, the WaveSurfer is a pretty important Series in their portfolio. They have worked with Siglent on the design to make sure its right, and LeCroy is also delivering the software. Which is why this scope doesn't suffer from the wide range of bugs that plague the SDS2000.

Take LeCroy.  If Siglent is the contract manufacturer, do you think lecroy would let siglent put their name on it?  Again, no way.  Why would they? 

Because Siglent is active in a market where LeCroy hasn't much presence. They already did this with Iwatsu for the Japanese market, and they do it now with Siglent for the Chinese market. This is nothing new.

For LeCroy, the advantage is that they still get money from the China sales (through the licensing of the software), and because the China version of the WS3k (SDS3000) shows "powered by Teledyne LeCroy" on the screen they also get their name out.

Siglent is likely and ODM to LeCroy, which means they own a part of the design.  To say that they will meet Lecroy's quality goals is true, but do not underestimate the effort it takes to specify every aspect of a design to ensure the quality you desire. 

Again, you ignore that this isn't the first time LeCroy did that. They did it with Iwtasu, which at the time the partnership started was mostly making analog scopes. LeCroy showed them how to do DSOs properly.

In fact, if you know Walter LeCroy then you'd also know that this was the basic principle of LeCroy: focus on your technology (which is in the front end/acquisition system and the software) and let others do the rest. All LeCroy scopes were designed and built this way. This is fundamentally different to say Tek or Agilent which use external manufacturers just as that, manufacturers.

And then guess what?   You just trained an ODM everything you know and they can do this on their own moving foward and you just created a competitor.  It's a slippery slope and the practicality of it says that the quality usually suffers, not transfer of too much IP.

Not really. LeCroy has shown Siglent (and Iwatsu) how to make a basic DSO at relatively low sample rates, which isn't really a secret. Everyone can do that. You think LeCroy is interested in making 4GSa/s mid-range scopes themselves? Certainly not. Their valuable IP is in DBS and high speed samplers, not in 4GSa/s mid-range scopes.

What LeCroy has done is to shorten these companies' learning process by a big margin. There is nothing special in the scope's hardware. The real IP is the software, and this always remained under LeCroy's control.

Fair enough if 80GB/s is correct, but it would be silly to judge a scope only on this use case, correct?

Sure, but if the same scope were to lock up during simpler tasks then the picture would be pretty bleak, don't you think?

That's not true.  Tek is only slow in the same use cases you said other scopes slow down in.   It's very responsive with pan / zoom / cursor even at full record length.  Add math functions and it slows to initially process, but that's it.  I just don't understand the discrepancy when comparing scope A to scope B.  The 8zi can be both speedy and a slug depending on what you are doing, same for higher end Agilent's and same for Tek scopes.  But to say all Tek's are slow with the possible exception of MDO3/4 series is not a fair statement and clearly stacked to support bias towards brand A and against brand B.

As I said many times before, I don't have a MDO3k (but everyone I know and work with seems to dislike it's overall performance and bugs, which is remarkable for a scope from a brand that is much beloved amongst EEs). I however had the misfortune to use some of Tek's high end offerings and I can honestly say that "wading through molasses" is a fitting term. Apart from the horrendous UI.

And no, I don't have anything against Tek. How could I when they are the only company that offers actually useable software (ArbExpress) for their AWGs, a task every other manufacturer I know has failed miserably. Tek's AWGs are also very good, although pricey, and because of the software I'm currently considering buying one. I also respect them for their analog scopes, which at the time were without doubt very innovative top-of-the-line products. But from what I have seen with their DSOs I really can't say the same about Tek's digital scopes. The older models (i.e. TDS700 Series) weren't bad at that time (although no longer top of the line), but their newer offerings are just poor.

And considering that I'm obviously not alone with my opinion about Tek's current scopes, and that Tek scope sales seem to be at an all-time low, I'd say my assessment does have some merits.

[Wuerstchenhund]

i am a recently converted lecroy fan (without owning any lecroys ... yet)

its Wuerstchenhund "fault"

Thanks, but my intention was never to "convert" anyone. Fanboyism is alreayd bad with cell phones and consoles but it's even more counterproductive with T&M gear.

I just mentioned LeCroy to show you some alternative, since they're often forgotten when it comes to scopes, which is a shame as their mid-range and high-end models are really very good (in many areas better than anything else out there). On the other side, their low-end sucks (never ever touch anything labelled "WaveAce").

But at the end of the day what matters is if a device fits your needs and budget, no matter who makes it.

[Wuerstchenhund]

IMHO Siglent better fixes the SDS2000 fast otherwise they can just quit making mid-range oscilloscopes. They are releasing too much new test equipment without finishing their existing equipment. 

Yes, it seems that way. I heard that the reason that the new LeCroy WaveJet is again an Iwatsu scope and not a rebadged Siglent SDS2000 is that the firmware is still in such an abysmal state.

Siglent really needs to get to grip that messing around with the software will make them loose the bit of goodwill they have built up because of their hardware.

[EEVblog]

What LeCroy has done is to shorten these companies' learning process by a big margin. There is nothing special in the scope's hardware. The real IP is the software, and this always remained under LeCroy's control.

Agilent famously did the same thing with Rigol and they created a monster. They now deeply regret that decision.

[Wuerstchenhund]

What LeCroy has done is to shorten these companies' learning process by a big margin. There is nothing special in the scope's hardware. The real IP is the software, and this always remained under LeCroy's control.

Agilent famously did the same thing with Rigol and they created a monster. They now deeply regret that decision.

Understandable, considering that the entry level is an important sector for Agilent/Keysight.

With LeCroy is different as they don't really care much about the low end, and these types of co-operation have proven beneficial to them in the past as they can have standard scopes produced cheaper while allowing them to also license their IP (software) to new markets.

I'm not generally a friend of out-sourcing but I have to admit that it seems to make sense for LeCroy to focus on the parts where they have the real edge (frontends/acquisition, software) and leave the rest of the scope (display, processing) to someone who has more expertise in this field.

[nctnico]

I'd agree with that, after all, how ever did we cope only a few short years ago? Sure it's a convenience, but you also have to also ask yourself how much is "enough"? One meg? Ten meg? One gig?

More memory helps to avoid having to setup complicated triggers. Recently I used my MSO to debug a project involving driving a TFT display from a CPLD. I just captured 2 frames of video data and zoom in on the problem area. Having over 10Mpoints of data makes that easy.

I agree, but is it value for money? Like I already stated, it's a convenience. And I too have been in a similar position where having a 128Mpt memory has been useful (although only to find the serial decode would only work on the first 32Mpt). But it wasn't like I couldn't work around it.

So is having all that memory worth a potentially four figure sum considering the number of times you really need it and the usually small amount effort involved in working around it?

IMHO, the question of how much deep more you need is a bit like posing the question "how long is a piece of string?".

For the same project I had to interface to an existing video display connection. I used a logic analyser with a lot of memory to make one detailed capture of several frames worth of data. I used that capture to analyse the data in depth without needing to make different measurements and go back and forth between several traces. Everything I needed was right there. In other words: there is never enough memory in a DSO or logic analyser.

[don]

i am a recently converted lecroy fan (without owning any lecroys ... yet)

its Wuerstchenhund "fault"

Thanks, but my intention was never to "convert" anyone. Fanboyism is alreayd bad with cell phones and consoles but it's even more counterproductive with T&M gear.

I just mentioned LeCroy to show you some alternative, since they're often forgotten when it comes to scopes, which is a shame as their mid-range and high-end models are really very good (in many areas better than anything else out there). On the other side, their low-end sucks (never ever touch anything labelled "WaveAce").

But at the end of the day what matters is if a device fits your needs and budget, no matter who makes it.

When you disuade someone against particular brands continuously (tek in this case) based on 3rd party info, and  use the term clueless monkey as buying the scope you sound a bit like a fanboy.  Any reasonable individual would understand the merits of different scopes and speak to them.   Lecroy, agilent and tek all make excellent scopes with different niches and propagating only negative hearsay vs first hand info is usually useless.   How about also discussing positive aspects?  Not enough experience to do so?   Useful info includes both the good and the bad because every scope is about tradeoffs and needs.  Tek is not leading with ultra high end scopes, but they still make excellent class leading mid to low range  scopes depending on your need  regardless of what you heard or saw in a demo.

Have you used a ws3000 or are only recommending because its a lecroy?   Because you are saying it's better than mdo3000 w/o using an mdo, and better than msox3000 as well not even understanding the needs. Just curious how much first hand info you have with specific scopes being discussed. Its an open forum so no harm just giving unsubstantiated opinions, but know it sounds a bit like fanboy speak if you are specifically trying to avoid that.

[Wuerstchenhund]

When you disuade someone against particular brands continuously (tek in this case) based on 3rd party info, and  use the term clueless monkey as buying the scope you sound a bit like a fanboy. 

If I had done that then maybe you were right. However, as I have clearly and openly stated I recommended against a particular brand based on my own experience with the what should be better scopes of that brand, combined with the feedback I got to a different scope model I myself have seen "perform" in a demo setup (where from what I have seen the feedback seemed valid, a scope should not lock up during intensive processing so that it no longer take any control input and needs to be switched off and back on to bring it back to an useable state).

The MDO3k demo was quite a while ago (not too long after the scope came out) so it may well be that Tek has improved the bugs and the stability through firmware updates. But quite frankly these days a new entry level scope made by a big brand should not come out with major stability issues. It also wasn't just a problem with this specific unit as the test was repeated some time later with a different MDO3k and it failed the same way.

I also stand by my statement that these days Tek scopes are mostly bought by corporate buyers (often called "monkeys" which is the standard derogatory term for managers and corporate types) who don't know much about scopes needed other than getting a set of basic scope specs from their engineers. It's really great that where you work you can decide freely what equipment you buy, but that certainly isn't the norm in a corporate setting. Through my work I literally have to work with really large groups of engineers in the UK, in Europe and in the US, the majority working in large corporate settings where individual engineers don't buy stuff but a corporate buyer does. This is pretty common. If they're lucky engineers may suggest a specific device for procurement, but unless there's a business case attached describing en detail why only this specific device will do the corporate buyer will just go with who on their preferred supplier list can provide something with similar specs. And usually you'll find that Tek is on that list.

And Tek support has definitely taken a hit. It already deteriorated long before Danaher took over, but now it seems to be pretty bad. Your personal experience may well be different (I guess you didn't had anything complicated you needed from Tek) and for low end scopes it's still ok-ish (they just replace mainboards or whole scopes if there's a problem) but I've seen a few pretty awful things for their more expensive scopes and other equipment, which I guess is DBS in action.

As I said before, I find it really remarkable that there's overall very little positive feedback to any newer Tek scopes in the labs I frequent, considering that Tek is probably the brand with the biggest amount of brand loyality amongst engineers. This alone is a pretty telling thing. Or just look around this forum, lots of people here that love Tek because of their analog scopes but for a modern scope most would buy anything else but Tek. All "fanboys" of Agilent/Rigol/whatever brand?

If I wanted to play your "fanboyism" game I could go ahead and point out that since you decided to buy that scope that there's a high probability you won't admit or at least play down any downsides, because people in general tend to see things overwhelmingly positive in stuff they have decided to buy just to avoid admitting they made a mistake, and that your general very dismissive attitude against other people's observations and experience with Tek could very well be considered "fanboyism". But I won't do that because at the end of the day it leads nowhere other than a waste of time.

Tek is not leading with ultra high end scopes, but they still make excellent class leading mid to low range  scopes depending on your need  regardless of what you heard or saw in a demo.

"Excellent class leading mid to low range"? Really? Are you for serious? And you call me a fanboy 

So tell me, what's "excellent class leading" on the TBS1000 Series? The huge 2.5k sample memory or the shitty screen? Or is it the slow UI?

I guess you haven't really had a look at Tek's product range. There's the shoddy TBS1000, followed by the MSO/DPO2k (slow 5k wfms/s, only 1M memory, still slow). This is followed by the DPO/MDO3k (which is great if you need an SA, but as a scope alone the attractiveness might be much lower, especially at that price). The DPO/MDO4k is a bit better than the DPO/MOD3k (you can use the SA at the same time as the scope), but again unless you need an SA it's not really attractive at that price. Aside from the SA in the 3k/4k, none of these scopes are particularly good or better than scopes from other manufacturers. If there's something which can be considered "excellent class leading" then Tek is really good at hiding it.

Agilent has the high waveform rate, Rigol has large memory and price, and LeCroy has advanced analysis. So where exactly is Tek's "excellent class leadership"? What makes them better than any other scope in that class ("leadership")? Please point that out for me (and just that we understand each other, I'm expecting positive stand-outs, not negative like the UI or the slowness) as I just can't see it.

Have you used a ws3000 or are only recommending because its a lecroy?   Because you are saying it's better than mdo3000 w/o using an mdo, and better than msox3000 as well not even understanding the needs. Just curious how much first hand info you have with specific scopes being discussed. Its an open forum so no harm just giving unsubstantiated opinions, but know it sounds a bit like fanboy speak if you are specifically trying to avoid that.

I had the chance to use the WS3054 for a day when a customer got one, and I have used Agilent's DSO-X2k and 3K quite a bit. The Agilents/Keysights are pretty good scopes, and quite slick to use. I'd say the DSO-X2k is probably fine as it is (although it should come with the 4M upgrade as standard) but the DSO-X3k needs more memory (say 10M like other scopes in this class). However, none of these Agilent/Keysight scopes have something to find signal anomalies as easy as it is with WaveScan on the LeCroy WS3k, which also has better maths, more sample memory (10M vs 1M/4M on the DSO-X) and faster processing. Of course the WS3k is a pretty new scope (came out around April if I remember right) while the DSO-X Series came out in 2011 (again, if I remember correctly) so it's to some extend understandable that the WS3000 is better.

What I really like with the WS3000 is that it brings in many of the things that are great in LeCroy's highend scopes into the lower midrange. Not just stuff like WaveScan which is great, but also things like ProBus (the unified probe interface which is standard for all LeCroy midrange and highend scopes since the 9300 Series which came out around 1993) and MAUI. It's a nice thing when you can simply mix and match probes with other/older scopes while other manufacturers often try to re-invent the wheel (and make old probes obsolete by intention) when they come out with a new scope series. The standardized UI is also a good thing, MAUI is by far the best touch interface for scopes (Agilent's touch UI is awful), and if you know how to operate the WS3000 then you can easily switch to any other LeCroy scope as they all have the same UI.

So yeah, after using these scopes I do believe that especially the lower WaveSurfer 3000 models are very attractive scopes, and IMHO a better choice for most tasks than the Keysights (I really have to force myself to not write 'Agilent') or even the Tek MDO3k (unless you really need that integrated SA).

I hear you saying that I should not judge a scope by a demo but quite frankly when a scope fails in a not that complex setup when every other scope does fine then really, what am I supposed to think? That this must be a great scope as long as I don't use it for the test setup (which was a production setup so no artificial barriers in there)? Really? When this scope behaves like all the other modern Tek scopes I had to use and every engineer I work with tells me that these scopes aren't very good which conforms to what I've seen, I should dismiss all that because one guy in a forum who actually decided to buy it says its the best thing since sliced bread ("excellent class leading"?)? I'm sorry but if you think that makes sense then you're deluded.

[nctnico]

I guess you haven't really had a look at Tek's product range. There's the shoddy TBS1000, followed by the MSO/DPO2k (slow 5k wfms/s, only 1M memory, still slow). This is followed by the DPO/MDO3k (which is great if you need an SA, but as a scope alone the attractiveness might be much lower, especially at that price). The DPO/MDO4k is a bit better than the DPO/MOD3k (you can use the SA at the same time as the scope), but again unless you need an SA it's not really attractive at that price. Aside from the SA in the 3k/4k, none of these scopes are particularly good or better than scopes from other manufacturers. If there's something which can be considered "excellent class leading" then Tek is really good at hiding it.

I have used a Tektronix DPO2k scope a few times and it is not a bad scope. I got it for a customer and choose Tektronix for political reasons (literally). The downside is that the screen resolution is extremely low (320x240) and it does take a long time to start but past that it works. A neat feature I have not seen on other oscilloscopes is the variable bandwidth filter. Sometimes it's useful to clean up a signal. IMHO the biggest problem with Tektronix is that the value for money is very low. They have got a lot of momentum with their brand loyalty.

If you need support from Tektronix a good option is to subscribe to their forum. There are a few Tektronix engineers on there which know a lot about the products and can point you in the right direction (even if you need to ship a product back).

[Wuerstchenhund]

I have used a Tektronix DPO2k scope a few times and it is not a bad scope. I got it for a customer and choose Tektronix for political reasons (literally). The downside is that the screen resolution is extremely low (320x240) and it does take a long time to start but past that it works. A neat feature I have not seen on other oscilloscopes is the variable bandwidth filter. Sometimes it's useful to clean up a signal.

Yes, the variable bw filter is a nice feature. I always wondered why we still only have the usual 20MHz/100MHz/whatever steps in most scopes. You can do the same on LeCroy scopes but then you need the DFP/DFP2 (Digital Filter Package) software option which is quite complex and expensive. It certainly would be nice to see a variable bw filter on other scopes as well.

One thing I like on some of the Tek scopes is the physical numerical keyboard. Scopes with touch screen usually have a virtual keyboard (and I can use a standard keyboard) which is fine but on a non-touch scope it's something I really miss as most of the time I prefer to enter my parameters directly instead of zapping through settings with a rotary selector (I guess I got used to this way of working on the old HP 54500 Series scopes back in the days - god I loved these scopes).

IMHO the biggest problem with Tektronix is that the value for money is very low. They have got a lot of momentum with their brand loyalty.

Indeed, but the loyality card doesn't work with younger engineers (who haven't lived through the analog era) and eventually will wear thin. But I fear that Danaher ownership will prevent Tek from really turning the ship around. I mean they are so far behind in the high-end scope market it's not even funny, and with technology trickling down over the generations they will eventually reach a point where they haven't much to offer and where they will have to resent to buying technology in or rebadging (which apparently they're already doing).

If you need support from Tektronix a good option is to subscribe to their forum. There are a few Tektronix engineers on there which know a lot about the products and can point you in the right direction (even if you need to ship a product back).

That's good advice, however posting to a forum wouldn't really have been an option in most of the cases I witnessed (which, admittedly, mostly involved high end gear).

[Lightages]

The Rigol DS1000E series has a variable filter, in software though. Ironically the DS1004Z series does not.

[nctnico]

IMHO the biggest problem with Tektronix is that the value for money is very low. They have got a lot of momentum with their brand loyalty.

Indeed, but the loyality card doesn't work with younger engineers (who haven't lived through the analog era) and eventually will wear thin. But I fear that Danaher ownership will prevent Tek from really turning the ship around. I mean they are so far behind in the high-end scope market it's not even funny, and with technology trickling down over the generations they will eventually reach a point where they haven't much to offer and where they will have to resent to buying technology in or rebadging (which apparently they're already doing).

IMHO Tektronix made several good DSOs as well in the 80's and 90's. I used to have a 2230 which was a nice analog/digital oscilloscope. The TDS500/600/700 series where also very good (with a numeric keypad). And not to forget the TDS3000 DPO. With the TDS200 series Tektronix had a real killer scope because it was cheap, portable and had a magic samplerate of 1Gs/s. But I agree Tektronix went downhill ever since and lost their momentum (The TBS1000 series is basically a TDS200).

If you need support from Tektronix a good option is to subscribe to their forum. There are a few Tektronix engineers on there which know a lot about the products and can point you in the right direction (even if you need to ship a product back).

That's good advice, however posting to a forum wouldn't really have been an option in most of the cases I witnessed (which, admittedly, mostly involved high end gear).

You'd be surprised. I often find my customers know a lot more about the systems I designed than me because they use it daily. Ofcourse that is no excuse to not support a product but it shows that it can be beneficial to have a platform (forum) where users can communicate with each other.

[don]

When you disuade someone against particular brands continuously (tek in this case) based on 3rd party info, and  use the term clueless monkey as buying the scope you sound a bit like a fanboy. 

If I had done that then maybe you were right. However, as I have clearly and openly stated I recommended against a particular brand based on my own experience with the what should be better scopes of that brand, combined with the feedback I got to a different scope model I myself have seen "perform" in a demo setup (where from what I have seen the feedback seemed valid, a scope should not lock up during intensive processing so that it no longer take any control input and needs to be switched off and back on to bring it back to an useable state).

The MDO3k demo was quite a while ago (not too long after the scope came out) so it may well be that Tek has improved the bugs and the stability through firmware updates. But quite frankly these days a new entry level scope made by a big brand should not come out with major stability issues. It also wasn't just a problem with this specific unit as the test was repeated some time later with a different MDO3k and it failed the same way.

I wouldn't put much weight on an early demo. The SA only displaying dBV has been fixed, I have not had any issues with probe calibration - maybe it's there.  There was some thread here that went dead and never really understood what was going on.   On the contrary, I find the auto compensation works great and is one less thing to calibrate on my own. I think Tek released three or four updates so far.    Have your fellow engineers upgraded the SW lately?  I'm sure there are still bugs, but I don't experience any bugs day to day.  All scopes have bugs, and I would specifically put the MDO3000 as one of the more stable scopes -- to the point that it is not a reason to dissuade someone from purchase and on the contrary might be considered a benefit depending on other scopes under consideration.

I also stand by my statement that these days Tek scopes are mostly bought by corporate buyers (often called "monkeys" which is the standard derogatory term for managers and corporate types) who don't know much about scopes needed other than getting a set of basic scope specs from their engineers. It's really great that where you work you can decide freely what equipment you buy, but that certainly isn't the norm in a corporate setting. Through my work I literally have to work with really large groups of engineers in the UK, in Europe and in the US, the majority working in large corporate settings where individual engineers don't buy stuff but a corporate buyer does. This is pretty common. If they're lucky engineers may suggest a specific device for procurement, but unless there's a business case attached describing en detail why only this specific device will do the corporate buyer will just go with who on their preferred supplier list can provide something with similar specs. And usually you'll find that Tek is on that list.

I disagree that your viewpoint is the norm and mine is isolated.  As I said earlier, my guess this is due to regional differences.  But I'm not sure what relevance your original comment had "they only got these scopes because some clueless monkey in corporate thought the same about not getting fired for buying Tek and not because it was requested by an engineer."  You really don't see this as a fanboy comment?  Does that help the OP  in any way other than thinking, "wow, only stupid people must by these"?  It's comments like this that do unnecessary harm and really have no benefit to evaluating a scope.  A scope is a tool.  If the tool meets your needs then buy it, regardless of who is buying what in different corporate cultures.  The key is assessing if the tool meets needs.  People can sift through these comments, but  you commented that your intention is not to partake in fanboy comments because someone said you converted them too LeCroy.  So just letting you know that these comments can cloud technical discussions and sway the uninformed in an unintended way.

And Tek support has definitely taken a hit. It already deteriorated long before Danaher took over, but now it seems to be pretty bad. Your personal experience may well be different (I guess you didn't had anything complicated you needed from Tek) and for low end scopes it's still ok-ish (they just replace mainboards or whole scopes if there's a problem) but I've seen a few pretty awful things for their more expensive scopes and other equipment, which I guess is DBS in action.

That may be the case, but I bet the support would improve if engineers had relationships and Tek and there were actually scopes purchased.  I'm not sure what you classify as complicated support.  We've had scopes that were blown from misuse picked up, loaner give, repaired and returned.  We have training sessions, explanation of what type of calculations analysis packs are doing, etc.  I guess I'm not sure what type of support you are looking for that you are not receiving.  And I can get help on scopes that are over 10yrs old.  True that repairs can get expensive  and might not make financial sense.  But it's not like a tek FE will respond "sorry, that's not supported".  So curious what bad support looks like on your end.

If I wanted to play your "fanboyism" game I could go ahead and point out that since you decided to buy that scope that there's a high probability you won't admit or at least play down any downsides, because people in general tend to see things overwhelmingly positive in stuff they have decided to buy just to avoid admitting they made a mistake, and that your general very dismissive attitude against other people's observations and experience with Tek could very well be considered "fanboyism". But I won't do that because at the end of the day it leads nowhere other than a waste of time.

I'm happy to talk about why I purchased the MDO3000 and what other scopes were considered (it's the kind of discussion I like actually).  I tried a Siglent SDS2000.  I posted quite extensively in the forum and offline with Siglent to try to get issues resolved.  A tek fanboy *probably* wouldn't take that route.  Then I tried a rigol DS4000.  Same basic deal, but I gave up quicker on getting issues resolved.  Agilent scopes are nice, but I need more memory and I want access to waveform data and not screen data.  MDO3000 ends up having 20x the memory of agilent if I recall my original review of how the memory dwindles away.  Tek is not as responsive as agilent but it's perfectly useable.  Watch the youtube videos.  It's responsive. I don't care if it slows down in corner cases because ALL scopes do if they are doing any waveform processing.  So to ding tek for that is not valid in my opinion. It would be nice if it was easier to abort operation on tek if you do something unintentional .  But you learn to not do that.  It's a consideration, but not strong enough to say  "it's slow as mollases" and then ignore it's other features.  But maybe you are not familiar with other features.  As I mentioned earlier, I can bog down a high end lecroy very easily but I would not flag it as a purchase decision because all scopes do if they have similar memory and waveform analysis capaiblilty.

A quick compare of MDO3000 and WS3000:
WS3000 has segmented memory, tek does not.  This is the biggest missing thing in my opinion but not critical for me because the triggers are great and I can use the intensity grading for non-digital viewing. 
Intensity grading: I really like tek's implementation, they even grade on static waveforms when you compress a long waveform to a single screen as well as in roll mode.  I don't know if WS3000 does this, but I know the tek implementation is great.  This is an important feature for me.
Tek has more advanced math capability. You can build math expressions as long as you want (check datasheet for functions).  WS3000 is more crude than I expected.  It looks like only two operators allowed?  It's surprising given their higher end scopes.  Maybe they have an option or manual is wrong?
Memory: both have 10M all analog / digital channels
Trigger: looks about the same from what I can tell
measurements: I need to count, both seem to be about the same, though I see that lecory specifically has rise time at 10/90 and 20/80 as separate measurements.  thresholds are configurable on tek so not sure what deal is with lecroy.  lecroy can display 6, tek can display 4
waveform update rate: I don't really care to be honest but tek is about double LeCroy
cursors: tek cursor knobs are buttery smooth and have two dedicated knobs.  Huge usability plus for me.  both do waveform or screen measurements and with gating so both good there
wavescan / search: believe both are comparable
decode: again, both are comparable as far as I can tell
histograms: both have them, not too different for my usage.
pass/fail mask testing:  tek can do, not sure about ws3000.  I don't use it
roll mode: tek rocks here and I use it extensivley.  It's very smooth, automatic, pan / zoom work just like other modes, I can do real time cursor gated measurements on it if memory is 5M  or less. 
zoom: again, I like how tek does it, so I prefer tek's implemenation
UI: again, personal but for me I like the GUI on tek and know I might be in the minority.  I do not like resistive touch screens at all.  I always use a mouse but prefer to have full access with buttons
network: I don't know about WS3000, but know that that I can save to network drives instantly and can remote desktop into the scope for realtime screen udpates and control.  UI of remote desktop is crude but works
Probes: I already have some tek probes so that's a huge plus.  And MDO is fully compatible with all tek probes.  Lecory is as well, so depends on what you have
SA:  tek wins here.  when I purchased I had 3GHz SA and one decode module for free, that was a big tipping point for me
Familiarity: I uses MDO4000 so knew what I was in for with all features.  I was burned by Siglent so am very cautious about jumping in on a new scope that was codesigned with them until I can use it or learn more about it.  It might be the best scope, but I was not willing to invest in it with limited feedback and no testing on my end.   Plus WS3000 was just released and not enough time for me to learn all that much other than videos, datasheet and manual.
Accuracy: I'm not sure about WS3000, it could be great.  MDO3000 is very good.  There was a thread about how accurate a lecroy is at 20mV / div for example, the MDO3000 is the same way.  I can get averages withing a few hundred microvolt or a mV depending on scale.  I don't use it like this, but accuracy is there.

You get the point, I evaluated what features I need or like and then saw what other scopes had to offer and purchased for my needs.  And I worked my way up in cost starting with siglent / rigol. 
 

Tek is not leading with ultra high end scopes, but they still make excellent class leading mid to low range  scopes depending on your need  regardless of what you heard or saw in a demo.

"Excellent class leading mid to low range"? Really? Are you for serious? And you call me a fanboy 

So tell me, what's "excellent class leading" on the TBS1000 Series? The huge 2.5k sample memory or the shitty screen? Or is it the slow UI?

I guess you haven't really had a look at Tek's product range. There's the shoddy TBS1000, followed by the MSO/DPO2k (slow 5k wfms/s, only 1M memory, still slow). This is followed by the DPO/MDO3k (which is great if you need an SA, but as a scope alone the attractiveness might be much lower, especially at that price). The DPO/MDO4k is a bit better than the DPO/MOD3k (you can use the SA at the same time as the scope), but again unless you need an SA it's not really attractive at that price. Aside from the SA in the 3k/4k, none of these scopes are particularly good or better than scopes from other manufacturers. If there's something which can be considered "excellent class leading" then Tek is really good at hiding it.

For calibration, I consider the MDO3000 a low end scope. MDO4000/5000/7000 mid range.   And this is for corporate purchases that are hand picked by engineers, not a buyer.  Half the cost is in the probes anyway.  So yes, being able to purchase a 200MHz MDO3024 with SA and a decode for a little over $4k for a corporation is a LOT of bang for the buck (or for me personally).   Other scopes  you refer to are really basic scopes.   Like "keep it simple"   And yes, they have their place.  What do you recommend for a factory environment?  I recommend small, light, reliable, easy to use.  Nothing fancy.  An agilent 2000x would probably work. Tek has a a5yr warranty on their basic scopes, that's pretty good.    We have several TDS3000's because they are tiny and robost and work well.  More pricey though.  But I would outfit freshman engineering labs with tek basic scopes and analyzer benches where they just need a fancy DMM.  Simple is good sometimes when the analyzer is not experienced and can get turned around.  It's a commodity item, not much to say here other than cost and reliablity, and tek little scopes are very durable and reliable.  The TDS3000 might as well be a handheld calculator it's so predictable.

Agilent has the high waveform rate, Rigol has large memory and price, and LeCroy has advanced analysis. So where exactly is Tek's "excellent class leadership"? What makes them better than any other scope in that class ("leadership")? Please point that out for me (and just that we understand each other, I'm expecting positive stand-outs, not negative like the UI or the slowness) as I just can't see it.

Well, tek waveform rate is pretty decent at >200k/s if you care about that.  Better than LeCroy WS3000 if we are talking low end. Big whoop though.   Even the old DPO754 can do over 200k/s and even 400k/s.  But tek didn't see that as a big driver so focused on waveform manipulation / deep memory.  I can't put Rigol in the same class just yet, but give them time.  And you say LeCroy has the advanced analysis, but ironically it looks like MDO3000 beats the WS3000 here.  And nobody has an integrated SA like Tek, particularly time correlated like the MDO4000.    I like their pan and zoom as well.   Plus whatever I said earlier with a quick comparison of WS3000 and MDO3000.  Oh, and the arbitrary waveform generate/sw is nice.  So yeah, I think tek is holding their own and leading the pack in some areas. 

But a few bullet points like you picked out do not reflect how a scope will work as general tool on a bench.   For example, I would not have much use for a 100GHz real time scope and would not want to deal with the probe set up.  Great scope, but not for me.   Bullet points are often marketing speak and while it is true they may impact some people in a very significant way, it does not necessarily mean for population as a whole.  Actually I don't think any manufacturer is absolutely dominating anywhere.  You mentioned LeCroy's advanced waveform analysis--  Tek is very good there too.  So I don't see a clear winner and think  they are all excellent choices depending on need.  Class leading with scopes simply means that they have an edge somewhere but not necessarily everywhere. 

What I really like with the WS3000 is that it brings in many of the things that are great in LeCroy's highend scopes into the lower midrange. Not just stuff like WaveScan which is great, but also things like ProBus (the unified probe interface which is standard for all LeCroy midrange and highend scopes since the 9300 Series which came out around 1993) and MAUI. It's a nice thing when you can simply mix and match probes with other/older scopes while other manufacturers often try to re-invent the wheel (and make old probes obsolete by intention) when they come out with a new scope series. The standardized UI is also a good thing, MAUI is by far the best touch interface for scopes (Agilent's touch UI is awful), and if you know how to operate the WS3000 then you can easily switch to any other LeCroy scope as they all have the same UI.

That is nice stuff, and the MDO3000 carries the same benefits on the tek front.  Identical UI to MDO4000, same probes for all scopes with TekVPI interface.  This just makes life easier but probe compatibility is huge.

I hear you saying that I should not judge a scope by a demo but quite frankly when a scope fails in a not that complex setup when every other scope does fine then really, what am I supposed to think? That this must be a great scope as long as I don't use it for the test setup (which was a production setup so no artificial barriers in there)? Really? When this scope behaves like all the other modern Tek scopes I had to use and every engineer I work with tells me that these scopes aren't very good which conforms to what I've seen, I should dismiss all that because one guy in a forum who actually decided to buy it says its the best thing since sliced bread ("excellent class leading"?)? I'm sorry but if you think that makes sense then you're deluded.

As I mentioned, I think your early demo is a bit outdated and superseded by first hand accounts on the latest firmware.  You are right, I am just a guy in a forum -- as are you.    But i have clocked many, many more hours with the MDO3000 and speak from first hand accounts on recent firmware.  If you think your first hand account on an early demo is more valid than actual in-lab usage by someone else (almost one year later) then I think you are pretty delusional as well.   I guess that's the spirit of the forums.  Write as you wish and choose to believe what you read as you wish. 

[Wuerstchenhund]

I wouldn't put much weight on an early demo. The SA only displaying dBV has been fixed, I have not had any issues with probe calibration - maybe it's there.  There was some thread here that went dead and never really understood what was going on.   On the contrary, I find the auto compensation works great and is one less thing to calibrate on my own. I think Tek released three or four updates so far.    Have your fellow engineers upgraded the SW lately?

Can't be sure for all of course but from some I know that they keep the firmware updated.

I know that things may well have changed since the demo but at the end of the day this is a situation quite similar to the SDS2000 - a product is thrown on the market with major bugs which may or may not get fixed later. I'm pretty sure Tek shows more initiative to fix problems with their scopes than Siglent does (well, there's not really much room for things getting worse at Siglent, is there?) but at the end of the day the scope simply wasn't ready for prime time when it should have been. That's poor with cheap brands like Siglent but it's quite an embarassment for a major brand like Tek.

I disagree that your viewpoint is the norm and mine is isolated.  As I said earlier, my guess this is due to regional differences.

Maybe, maybe not. I'm what could be considered a 'travelling engineer' who doesn't just work on a single place, so I'd like to think that I'm probably see a bit more of country-specific differences than someone who has your standard 9-5 job on a fixed workplace. But yeah, none of us has done any proper market research to establish how much scopes Tek sells or doesn't sell compared to others, and how much Tek is still preferred by engineers. Still, I stand by my observations.

But I'm not sure what relevance your original comment had "they only got these scopes because some clueless monkey in corporate thought the same about not getting fired for buying Tek and not because it was requested by an engineer."  You really don't see this as a fanboy comment?  Does that help the OP  in any way other than thinking, "wow, only stupid people must by these"?  It's comments like this that do unnecessary harm and really have no benefit to evaluating a scope.  A scope is a tool.  If the tool meets your needs then buy it, regardless of who is buying what in different corporate cultures.  The key is assessing if the tool meets needs.  People can sift through these comments, but  you commented that your intention is not to partake in fanboy comments because someone said you converted them too LeCroy.  So just letting you know that these comments can cloud technical discussions and sway the uninformed in an unintended way.

Like everyone else I'm expressing my opinion, nothing more nothing less. And again, I stand by my comment that in a corporate environment Tek is often bought because of process and the decoupling of the "shop floor" from those who make procurement decisions. Like it or not, this is pretty common in a corporate environment. And guess what, it's even worse in the Defense sector where Tek often is bought because of contractual obligations and not because some engineer decided it's the best tool for the job.

If you want to brush off my experience over almost three decades in these environments around the globe as "fanboyism", fine. I don't have any "feelings" again test kit (except maybe when a device is obviously Designed By Moron which can raise my anger level, but I guess that's pretty common amongst engineers) or any preference for any manufacturer. Especially the big brands rarely produce unusable crap, but everyone of them has done exactly that on occasion. In my opinion "fanboyism" (i.e. the fanatism for a particular item or brand) is a sign of weakness of character of people with no life, but each to his own I guess. I'm not interested in "converting" anyone (whatever that means), my aim is to share my experience and show alternatives that may have not been considered. For scopes, it just happens that often LeCroy is not even considered, which isn't surprising (I'm really only familiar with their products for a few years, although I was aware of their existence before). That's why you won't find me throwing around marketing blah like "excellent class-leading", because that's all that it is - an empty phrase.

That may be the case, but I bet the support would improve if engineers had relationships and Tek and there were actually scopes purchased.  I'm not sure what you classify as complicated support.  We've had scopes that were blown from misuse picked up, loaner give, repaired and returned.  We have training sessions, explanation of what type of calculations analysis packs are doing, etc.  I guess I'm not sure what type of support you are looking for that you are not receiving.  And I can get help on scopes that are over 10yrs old.  True that repairs can get expensive  and might not make financial sense.  But it's not like a tek FE will respond "sorry, that's not supported".  So curious what bad support looks like on your end.

Stuff like sending in a DPO7000 (if I remember correctly) with a defective hard disk (started throwing up bad sectors) which comes back after three weeks with the Acquisition board replaced (which of course didn't fix the problem). Or stuff like scopes sent back with missing screws, or other things not working that worked fine before. As I said it seems to be better for entry level scopes (where they just replace either the scope or the mainboard) but when your highend scopes need to be returned two or three times for a problem to be fixed then this isn't great, is it?

I'm happy to talk about why I purchased the MDO3000 and what other scopes were considered (it's the kind of discussion I like actually).  I tried a Siglent SDS2000.  I posted quite extensively in the forum and offline with Siglent to try to get issues resolved.  A tek fanboy *probably* wouldn't take that route.  Then I tried a rigol DS4000.  Same basic deal, but I gave up quicker on getting issues resolved. 

I'm not surprised, both scopes suffer from firmware issues that shouldn't be there in the first place.

Agilent scopes are nice, but I need more memory and I want access to waveform data and not screen data.  MDO3000 ends up having 20x the memory of agilent if I recall my original review of how the memory dwindles away.

 

Well, the DSO-X2k/3k are indeed a bit spare on memory. It's about time Agilent comes out with a successor to these scopes-

Tek is not as responsive as agilent but it's perfectly useable.  Watch the youtube videos.  It's responsive. I don't care if it slows down in corner cases because ALL scopes do if they are doing any waveform processing.

Yes but Tek slows down when others are still responsive, and when the load gets very high tends to lock up (which no scope should do).

[/quote]So to ding tek for that is not valid in my opinion. It would be nice if it was easier to abort operation on tek if you do something unintentional .  But you learn to not do that.  It's a consideration, but not strong enough to say  "it's slow as mollases" and then ignore it's other features. [/quote]

Well, I'm sorry but "slow as molasses" is what the newer Teks I have used and seen felt like. The MDO3000s I've seen were admittedly not the worst offenders (although they just felt slow), my main gripe is with their high end offerings (which also aren't great on features btw).

But maybe you are not familiar with other features.  As I mentioned earlier, I can bog down a high end lecroy very easily but I would not flag it as a purchase decision because all scopes do if they have similar memory and waveform analysis capaiblilty.

As I said before, there's a difference between a high end scope getting maxed out doing multiple maths and analysis capabilities with very large data sets (over 80GB/s in case of the WaveMaster 8zi, that's a huge amount of data) and a entry level scope working on 1/32th of that amount doing a single operation and becoming completely unresponsive so it has to be rebooted to recover (which the WaveMaster won't do). We're talking about a simple 2.5GSa/s scope here. It's fine when processes like FFT maxes it out but never ever should it lock up.

A quick compare of MDO3000 and WS3000:
WS3000 has segmented memory, tek does not.  This is the biggest missing thing in my opinion but not critical for me because the triggers are great and I can use the intensity grading for non-digital viewing. 
Intensity grading: I really like tek's implementation, they even grade on static waveforms when you compress a long waveform to a single screen as well as in roll mode. 

IIRC same with the WS3k (can't test it as I don't have access to one any more).

Tek has more advanced math capability. You can build math expressions as long as you want (check datasheet for functions).  WS3000 is more crude than I expected.  It looks like only two operators allowed?  It's surprising given their higher end scopes.  Maybe they have an option or manual is wrong?

Yes, the WS3k allows only two operators (the larger scopes allow four, unlimited maths requires the XMATH or XMAP option, I guess an Advanced Math package will come out for the WS3k as well). Allowing you to define math with several operators is indeed a nice feature of the MDO3k, but considering how slow this scope is in overall processing I honestly can't see much value in it. On a larger scope with appropriate processor this makes sense, but not on such low end hardware.

Trigger: looks about the same from what I can tell

Only if you ignore WaveScan, which can trigger on almost anything in a signal. It means you're no longer bound to the few standard triggers to find an anomaly. On the WaveSurfer Series it's a bit cut down over the larger scopes (WaveRunner and up) but still it's very useful for a debugging scope.

wavescan / search: believe both are comparable

I had a look at the MDO3k manual, and based on that, WaveScan is much more flexible than Search. For example, WaveScan can scan for

roll mode: tek rocks here and I use it extensivley.  It's very smooth, automatic, pan / zoom work just like other modes, I can do real time cursor gated measurements on it if memory is 5M  or less.

IIRC Zoom etc should work in roll mode as well, as should measurements. Unfortunately the WS3k lacks the long time base of other LeCroy scopes so it's not the best scope for capturing extremely long events.

zoom: again, I like how tek does it, so I prefer tek's implemenation

I guess it's personal preference, but I can't see what is easier than just drawing a line (which creates a box) over the part of a waveform that I want to zoom in.

UI: again, personal but for me I like the GUI on tek and know I might be in the minority.  I do not like resistive touch screens at all.  I always use a mouse but prefer to have full access with buttons

I thought the same in the past (I really dislike Agilent's touch interface, which has clearly been designed for mouse operation with touch as an afterthought). But MAUI (especially on the bigger scopes) is really great and intuitive. The WS3k UI feels a bit cut down, though, which is of course because the hardware is simpler and because it's a lower mid-range scope. But still the large screen and the sensible options (especially WaveScan) make it in my opinion a great debugging scope. Maths may not be as flexible as on the MDO3k but it seems this is more a checkbox exercise on Tek's part, as long expressions are pretty useless on such weak hardware (which has shown to struggle with simpler tasks already).

network: I don't know about WS3000, but know that that I can save to network drives instantly and can remote desktop into the scope for realtime screen udpates and control.  UI of remote desktop is crude but works

I haven't tried network but considering that the WS3k runs Windows I'd expect the same to work on this scope. There's also a remote control app (WaveStudio) which works great and should also support the WS3k.

SA:  tek wins here.  when I purchased I had 3GHz SA and one decode module for free, that was a big tipping point for me

Yes, if the SA is useful then it's definitely a bonus, especially when the 3GHz upgrade is free. Which realistically it should be as the artificial limitation to the scope's analog bw looks a bit silly at that price.

But the LeCroy has some nice features, too, i.e. LabNotebook, or thanks to the touchscreen the very easy annotation function (according to the manual the MDO3k can annotate traces, too, but without touch it's more combersome and limited).

Familiarity: I uses MDO4000 so knew what I was in for with all features.  I was burned by Siglent so am very cautious about jumping in on a new scope that was codesigned with them until I can use it or learn more about it.  It might be the best scope, but I was not willing to invest in it with limited feedback and no testing on my end.   Plus WS3000 was just released and not enough time for me to learn all that much other than videos, datasheet and manual.

Well, at the end of the day any scope should be test-driven before settling on it, especially at that price class.

Accuracy: I'm not sure about WS3000, it could be great.  MDO3000 is very good.  There was a thread about how accurate a lecroy is at 20mV / div for example, the MDO3000 is the same way.  I can get averages withing a few hundred microvolt or a mV depending on scale.  I don't use it like this, but accuracy is there.

Not sure on the accuracy front as I didn't test that. But I wouldn't necessarily expect the same accuracy as on other LeCroy scopes. But at the end of the day this needs to be tested to be sure.

You get the point, I evaluated what features I need or like and then saw what other scopes had to offer and purchased for my needs.  And I worked my way up in cost starting with siglent / rigol.

True, but quite frankly it should have been clear that the Siglent isn't really in the same ballpark as other scopes in the price class (i.e. Agilent DSO-X2k/3k, your MDO3k, the WS3k, R&S HMO3000), I mean they really have a long history of producing buggy firmware.
 

Tek is not leading with ultra high end scopes, but they still make excellent class leading mid to low range  scopes depending on your need  regardless of what you heard or saw in a demo.

The MDO3k does have some nice features (i.e. annotation and Search, but less so the Adv Math function which seems like a gimmick on such slow hardware), but they are all secondary if the scope is slow or even becomes unresponsive, which is my main gripe with Tek. Considering that it comes with an integrated vector SA one could forgive the small display, but still it's another disadvantage. The other thing (which of course is a personal preference thing) is that I find the UI butt-ugly and unintuitive. It was ok when the TDS700 was current but Tek should have really come up with something better by now. But as I said, that's personal preference.

You mentioned LeCroy's advanced waveform analysis--  Tek is very good there too

I don't have much experience with the low end but in the high end Tek really isn't very good there. Not by a long margin.

.  So I don't see a clear winner and think  they are all excellent choices depending on need.  Class leading with scopes simply means that they have an edge somewhere but not necessarily everywhere. 

What I really like with the WS3000 is that it brings in many of the things that are great in LeCroy's highend scopes into the lower midrange. Not just stuff like WaveScan which is great, but also things like ProBus (the unified probe interface which is standard for all LeCroy midrange and highend scopes since the 9300 Series which came out around 1993) and MAUI. It's a nice thing when you can simply mix and match probes with other/older scopes while other manufacturers often try to re-invent the wheel (and make old probes obsolete by intention) when they come out with a new scope series. The standardized UI is also a good thing, MAUI is by far the best touch interface for scopes (Agilent's touch UI is awful), and if you know how to operate the WS3000 then you can easily switch to any other LeCroy scope as they all have the same UI.

That is nice stuff, and the MDO3000 carries the same benefits on the tek front.  Identical UI to MDO4000, same probes for all scopes with TekVPI interface.  This just makes life easier but probe compatibility is huge.

I hear you saying that I should not judge a scope by a demo but quite frankly when a scope fails in a not that complex setup when every other scope does fine then really, what am I supposed to think? That this must be a great scope as long as I don't use it for the test setup (which was a production setup so no artificial barriers in there)? Really? When this scope behaves like all the other modern Tek scopes I had to use and every engineer I work with tells me that these scopes aren't very good which conforms to what I've seen, I should dismiss all that because one guy in a forum who actually decided to buy it says its the best thing since sliced bread ("excellent class leading"?)? I'm sorry but if you think that makes sense then you're deluded.

As I mentioned, I think your early demo is a bit outdated and superseded by first hand accounts on the latest firmware.  You are right, I am just a guy in a forum -- as are you.    But i have clocked many, many more hours with the MDO3000 and speak from first hand accounts on recent firmware.  If you think your first hand account on an early demo is more valid than actual in-lab usage by someone else (almost one year later) then I think you are pretty delusional as well.   I guess that's the spirit of the forums.  Write as you wish and choose to believe what you read as you wish.

Well, as I said it's a bit strange when everyone around me dislikes these scopes and only one guy in a forum says they're great. Please forgive me when I put more weight into what people I know better (as many of them I work with) say than on a single anonymous (more or less) statement on a forum. Especially when it seems that even in that forum most people would, for a new scope, buy anything other than Tek. And let's not forget that Tek is still not doing very well, which doesn't really fit the image of a "market leader":

http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2012/12/tektronix_five_years_after_sal.html

In fact, it seems Tek these days has even less employees than LeCroy, while the portfolio is much larger. It's not difficult to see why there's so little innovation.

[don]

This is getting way to long to quote and such:

wavescan vs. search: wavescan looks to be a SW scan after you do a dumbed down trigger (ie first edge detect then wavescan for a pulse width).  Tek let's you search on any trigger event as far as I can tell, so I really don't see a difference there.  Maybe I'm missing something.  LeCroy's seems like Agilient's original infiniscan, which was a sw work-around to lack of HW trigger function - at least on earlier scopes and I'm guessing there is more of a convergence here.  Tek sells it as a waveform search to find events of interest which you define as triggers or can set a manual mark.    Tek's search lets you look for complex trigger events after you capture as well.  Plus, post trigger anomaly detection can usually be solved by an infinite persistence mode.  You get a much higher waveform capture rate so is usually a better bet than sw scans if looking for rare events.   Personally i use  combination of hw trigger and infinite persistisence if looking at edges and such.  Lecroy says their wavescan is the only scope to trigger on frequency - i wonder how that differs from pulse width trigger. Anyway, in the end seems similar to me.

Regarding math: clearly tek has an advantage over ws3000.  The processing time / lock ups is no where near as bad as you suggest.  I did a quick test and it processes 100k waveforms more or less in real time (less than 1s).  At 1M takes about 7-8s, 5M about 35s.   This is for full waveform and measurement, not cursor gating or screen which I may speed things up.  The good news is the waveforms continuously update much faster, meaning multi refreshes per second with no apparent slow down from math and measurement additions.  What lags is the math and any measurement on the math by the delay I mentioned.  And there was no lock-up or unresponsiveness of UI while it was calculating.  I could navigate UI, press  run/stop, zoom, etc.  So I think that's a solid pass and if one is interested in performing large math calculations (ie log, sine, etc with many operators) it should suit needs.  Faster would be better, but very usable and obviously much more usable than WS3000 two operator math functions.

Regarding repair, we never had a fiasco like that.  We have sent in DPO7000 but it was repaired w/o issues.  Not surprising that service is not perfect.

Sluggishness:  All I can say is try recent firmware in real world settings without corner cases.  The 8zi I used only had 32M memory -- that's only 3x the MDO3000.   And it was a snail with what I was doing and unresponsive.  Cursors were useless -- they jumped 1/5 of the screen at a click.    I stand by that all scopes can stall.  At least all I have used.  I am happy with the MDO3000 speed and agree I would like it faster but I'm realistic.  It's a $4k scope with advanced waveform analysis.  that slows it down.  If I change the math / measurements to screen resolution like other scopes it speeds way up.

Early scope performance:  I did not have the scope early on, but I'm willing to bet that tek was WAY better than siglent and question that it was not ready for prime time.  Maybe it wasn't because I really have no idea,  but it clearly is now.  Find my early thread to see how much I found on SDS2000.  It was pretty severe for only a few hours of use and I would need to read up to see what was reported on tek for comparison.  There are many youtube videos on tek and the only bug I saw in there  was the dBV issue on SA, and that that was fixed with a factory reset (and seems fixed now in firmware)

Fanboyism/experience, etc:  I don't doubt you have plenty of experience.  As do I. I have dealt with hundreds of engineers in multiple companies and countries as well.  We really don't complain about scopes except when using them in real time and just complaining.  Tek has a great reputation with my peers, as does agilent and LeCroy -- more of choose what you like with people I deal with.  Pick a drill, pick a soldering iron.  objectivity rules as needs change from task to task.

We went through feature by feature for MDO3000 and WS3000 and nothing is jumping out that should dissuade the OP from MDO3000.  Both are likely good options. A lot ends up being subjective.  Such as some like touch interfaces, some despise. Tek works with external keyboard on that front for text entry so take your pick. The list goes on. I'm an objective engineer and try to steer clear of negative bias with designs and data on the job and tool evaluation.  No scope is perfect and most scopes are not useless.  Rigol certainly has it's place, even SDS2000 has it's place and may work.  But really disappointing by siglent to do a bait and switch and not support intended operation. Actually same with rigol ds4000 -- that's a $2.5k scope and performs worse than their $800 scope from what I gather. Hopefully both companies make good on it for people that purchased them or we get a market correction next go around. 

BTW - thats a 2yr old link?!  Anyway, layoffs are never good for the employyes but sometimes they are needed.  That does not mean their products are bad.  Moving from a dominating position to less market share is an example of why layoffs are needed. That and house cleaning which unfortunately needs to be done at times to be profitable. And Danaher seems to be doing well.  Lecroy isn't exactly a massive money making machine. Lecroy was sold to Teledyne for $240 million and tek sold for $2.8B I believe.  Agilent market cap closer to $14B.  Keysight $5.7B. Teledyne $3.7B.  Any loss of market share translates to a lot of jobs if not running efficiently.  Danaher market cap is $60B and has nice growth. Doesn't seem like a train wreck  to me and tek's latest offering (mdo3000) is quite competitive.  So i don't know how to translate that link to product attributes.  I wish all three companies good luck so we have more products to choose from.