I do agree that having same/same is a valuable thing to have. So that begs the question, how many people here bought their scopes based on needs, and how many bought what they could afford, hoping the need would come and justify the purchase?
A different answer might be true when buying for work with their money, or buying for one self, with your own money!
Hi
Ok, I can answer that one at least.
Here at home, I buy have been buying scopes since I was a kid (as in 14 years old). I have not stopped buying them since then. Need has less to do with it than "boy that's neat and better than what I have". It also helps a lot when they turn up for free or nearly free.
At work, they are fairly rigid in production. Everybody gets almost the same gear and it all swaps around. When they decide to change it is a *massive* undertaking. Most of the lab techs are (if they have a scope) set up like production.
Oddly enough, a lot of the engineers simply do not have a scope at all. There are a couple of shared units from various generations and manufacturers. Each of them is unique. Each of them has a "minder". All of them are a bit interesting to get running if you have never seen their menu system before. Yes, you can guess what happens in terms of probes with all sorts of stuff running around .... a very big mess. Even more so when you take a look at what the "real" probes bought new from the manufacturer cost on most of this.
The upshot is that people spend more time debugging without a scope than they would if they could just grab *something* and figure out that the I2C died after that fine new code from Bob fired up ...
Yes that's a business argument and not a technical approach to it.
Bob (the guy who nuked that driver ...)