Buying test equipment at work? How low can we go?

[Fungus]

A great example of this is the "Ribbon" interface introduced about a decade ago by Microsoft.  Actively disliked by most who were deeply trained in the older interface, the newer interface has objective evidence of its superiority.  In spite of that I still prefer the older interface.

The ribbon is slower to find things. It's too verbose, not as discoverable, all the mouse movements are bigger and need more clicks. You can tell they designed it around people who've never used a computer when they should really have designed it around people who actually use computers.

It's cutting off your nose to spite your face. The beginners can learn and get up to speed, the people who use it daily will be pissed off forever.

IMHO, YMMV.

[Fungus]

Can you give an example of when this might happen...?

Their automatic measurements of the display record also cause inconsistent measurements.

You had to go down to $350 Rigols to see that these days and once you're aware that it exists then it's much less of a problem.

(we're back to "know how it works" again, and I'm not sure if there's a price level where that stops being true)

I have had problems in the past with multimeters which change input resistance with range.  What do you do when one range says 100.00 and another says 101.0?  That may not seem like much of an error but it absolutely is.

Sure, but I've got cheap-ass multimeters that don't do that.

AFAICT there's real stinkers from all manufacturers at all levels. Spending more money is no guarantee in itself.

[David Hess]

Sure, but I've got cheap-ass multimeters that don't do that.

But how do you determine that before buying and testing?  Cheap test instruments come with incomplete documentation and specifications.

[nctnico]

But how do you determine that before buying and testing?  Cheap test instruments come with incomplete documentation and specifications.

That's why we have this discussion board.

Exactly. Investing some time into a cheaper instrument can be worthwhile.

[Fungus]

But how do you determine that before buying and testing?  Cheap test instruments come with incomplete documentation and specifications.

That's why we have this discussion board.

Yep. There's plenty of horror stories on the high end, too. Spending lots of money is no guarantee.

(and cheap stuff tends to be more up to date, using new tech...)