-Plastic rotary knobs that split and then fall off (all of em, the plastic becomes hard and brittle over time),
Yes, that was pretty common on the 9300 Series (mid ''90s) and the WaveRunner LT (late '90s), falling off knobs was pretty much their trademark. With the WR2LT and WavePro 900 the knobs were changed, and much more durable, and aside from early production runs of the WR(M)Xi (2006) and falling off "Superknobs" on early production runs of the WaveRunner 6zi (2009) that wasn't much of a problem. Plus LeCroy often just sent you a batch of replacement knobs (usually the improved variant).
-Removable frontpanels gimmicks that become a bad contact nightmare (7ZI series)
Yes, the removable frontpanel (the whole panel can be removed and connected to the scope via USB cable so that you can have the controls close to your workspace, which I find pretty neat) on early WP7zi units had contact problems with the USB sockets when they were plugged in the unit. That was fixed pretty quickly out in the field and in production.
-Slow as molasses to respond to their UI (7000 series, 7Zi)
Not really. I worked on 7zi and 7zi-A, and there's nothing slow on these scopes. I also have a WavePro 7000A in my private lab, and again, no slowness here. Some of the earlier WavePro 7000 (non-A) which were sold with Windows 2000 were somewhat laggy when operating the front panel, this was improved in later software updates, and these days these scopes should be upgraded to XP anyways as otherwise they're stuck on an antique firmware.
I vaguely remember that last time you listed your "dislikes" you mentioned that they were still on Windows 2000 running an older software. If so then maybe you should try XP and the current firmware, and your problem should be gone.
-Become more noisy than a hoover vacuum as soon as you do anything with em ( 7Zi series )
Yes, they are nosiy. So are pretty much all multi-GHz high end scopes (the DSO90k will blow your brains out). That is mostly because these scopes develop an extensive amount of heat that needs to be removed somehow.
-Crappy probes where the pogo-tips break off in the grabber hooks.
Never happened to me. And I have not exactly the most sensitive hands.
-Endless "calibrating" messages and "triggering" messages .. with 4 to 10 seconds blind times. ( come on, make an ADc that doesn't drift will ya ! No other scope manufacturer needs that crap)
If you get endless "calibrating" and "triggering" messages then your scope is either defective or you're doing something wrong (actually, endless "calibration" was one of the bugs on earlier WavePro 7000 and 8000 scopes).
And if you think that other manufacturer's ADCs don't drift then you're wrong, they pretty much drift exactly the same, just the scope doesn't bother to compensate for it.
BTW, you know that you can disable the auto calibration? You should, as I'm pretty sure I told you before
![Wink ;)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/wink.gif)
- buggy user interfaces. one The 7000 and 7300 DSA's : spin the timebase knob too fast and the scope bluescreens... whoopdedoo. STILL not fixed after 10 years of complaining !
Of course the problem has been fixed, pretty much in one of the earlier Windows 2000 software releases.
- bass ackwards functionality. Like store traces in memory , perform an acquisition , scroll and you lose time lock between memory and acquisition... duh !
Never noticed that, but considering that the other software issues you mentioned have been fixed long ago this could well be another case of outdated software.
BTW, these problems are not limited to LeCroy, I've seen more than my fair share of annoying and aggravating bugs on Agilent scopes as well. That's why the software can be updated.
The problem with LeCroy machinery is that these products started as very fast, deep memory samplers to be used in the physics department. They still have that mindset. They don't behave like what you'd normally expect from a scope. They have their strange quirks that make sense if you treat em as deep memory fast samplers. Not so much as you'd expect from a scope.
I work almost exclusively with high end scopes, mostly with Agilent/Keysight, and aside from UI and functional differences (i.e. some stuff that's available on one scope or but not another) a LeCroy scope pretty much behaves like any other scope. The only "strange" quirk is the swapped horizontal and vertical controls, the rest is pretty straight forward.
LeCroy also fails miserably when trying to integrate stuff. Their foray into mixed signal ( the want to have 16 or 32 digital channels) was a disaster. They used a third party to design that block and the integration was a disaster. The damn thing was so buggy on its UI that a selected block to zoom in on would show a completely different block.
That would be the MS-32 MSO option that I mentioned earlier, and yes, it was buggy like hell and pretty useless. However, that thing came out around 2003, and in the last 12 years things have changed a bit. The later MS-250 and MS-500 MSO options for WaveRunner MXi and WaveSurfer MXs are actually pretty good, and aside from the fact that the MSO boxes are a bit large and cumbersome the MSO performance is pretty much on a similar level as what you can get from Keysight.
The same goes for their current probes. Overpriced rebadged Hioki's to make em compatible with their crappy 6 pin pinheader scope connector.
I can't complain over Hioki, their probes are actually pretty good. I also don't know what is "crappy" on the 6pin header that is part of ProBus, the probe interface they now use pretty much unchanged for over 20 years and which has proven to be pretty solid, but if that's your opinion then fine.