Thanks for the lengthy and well thought out replies guys - I really do appreciate your input.
I *really wanted* to love the DS1074Z - it offers so much for so the little. I tried it and packed it up, then I got it out again for more testing and packed it up again. I don't want to bad mouth it for people who love it - I do think it is a good value for the $$$ especially in time once the firmware becomes more solid. For me it just is so disappointing next to the DS2072. I truly "love" the DS2072. If I were someone seriously debating between the DS1074Z and the DS2072, unless they absolutely needed the 4 channels, I would strongly recommend the DS2072.
My complaints about the DS1074Z are:
The counter feature doesn't work properly. If you are triggering in the middle of a signal, it counts right, but if you move the trigger up towards the top or bottom 10-20% of the signal (depending on speed), the counter begins to go down significantly. It seems more pronounced with sine waves, and more pronounced when they are faster. The trigger is not getting jittery, the waveform will stay solid and stable, but the counter will start dropping the closer to the edge of the wave you get.
The counter doesn't get saved. You can't turn it on and save your configuration and then load that configuration. It will turn off the feature. I wonder what other settings do not save and load. When saving it doesn't have the ten files already there to just quickly pick.
The UI (and I know this is being picky) is not at all clean and crisp like the DS2000/DS4000 scopes. There are tons of goofy messages displayed one after another so quickly you can possibly read them. "keyboard locked! --> blah blah blah --> blah blah blah --> keyboard unlocked! --> can operate now!" all done within 500 ms it feels like. I don't see the point of displaying these messages in the first place, and to display them so quickly that they can't be read makes even less sense. The buttons have text that is oversized and runs into the side of the buttons. Then there are the sideways labels for the menu that are so small that they are too small. The little dots on the right and left of the menus waste an entire column of space when the way they handled it on the DS2 series does not. Little things like even the escape arrow button looks goofy with a circle at the end of it.
You can't hide the menus which is a major disappointment compared to the DS2/DS4 series. This is such a big deal I think they should add it to the existing firmware even though there is no menu button on the right side. They can just use the up arrow going once too far to hide the menu for example.
The sin(x)/x feature changes the size of the waveform. The actual height of it on the screen and the peak to peak measurement as well.
It also has the trigger output jitter that the DS2 suffers from.
The menus are not very clear at some places. You press OK to clear the flash and it appears to do nothing - but I think it is actually doing it. This is sort of the opposite of too many messages, but not enough in some areas.
Adjusting a signal up and down can be downright impossible to get it where you want. For example, if I am trying to adjust the vertical position of a channel to -2V, I can get to -1.940V, -1.960V, but the next step will jump to -2.040V. Try to work it back to -2V and it jumps over it again. Repeating does the same thing. Can't get to -2V. This seems to have to do with how it scales when you adjust the knob.
Responsiveness is an issue, not waveform speed, but you can tell when making adjustments sometimes that certain aspects of the running stop and restart.
The controls are not as nice. Scale and position knobs on the DS2 are solid and strong, but the DS1Z ones feel loose and wobbly. To me it feels solid when you pick it up, but build quality on the buttons and controls on the front are not on the same level.
Even the BNC connectors seemed odd with a outside barrel that wasn't smooth from tip to scope face. There is a line around it that I'm guessing changes the diameter in the middle. Maybe there is a good reason for this, but I don't know what it is.
The probes tested good with the rise time test I was doing (as good as my trusty 300MHz RP1300's), but the hook on them didn't seem very nice.
The counter not being right issue and the sin(x)/x changing the wave height issue were both measurement issues that were the final straw for me returning it, but the front controls quality and the UI didn't win me either. If I didn't already have the DS2072 to compare it to, I'd probably think more favorably of it.