I suppose I now have a reason to find a decomm’d Agilent/Keysight handheld, and a civilian model to compare with. I’d guess that’s one way to see if this is consistent across brands.
The twinkle in my eye for the HP/Agilent gear really has vanished ever since [wow that list got super long so it’s below the fold if you’re curious]. I sort of gag at the notion of spending money on their stuff now, even on the second-hand market.
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they decided to refuse my (domestic) business access to the parts store simply because its website is about as minimally present as is possible (rather common in security — an industry they claim to serve but clearly don’t grok either the industry nor the concept of the word), and for some reason continue to do so despite being pointed to the gov site that verifies my business; they terribly botched a GDPR request that somehow subscribed me to more spam that read “Hi GDPR,”; they never cared about let alone remedied my access to loads of (seemingly their own?) assets in the asset management console, then at one point spammed me about having it all — the gear that I’ve got nought to do with — calibrated. That garnered an email letting them know once again about how none of these things are mine, to web support. And somehow support interpreted that as an indication that they should have someone in the service department email me a quote to have all the gear that’s not mine calibrated.
My lab was built around a Keithley, four HPAK meters and four HPAK power supplies earlier this year, and this whole ordeal has resulted in a pair of 8846As, another two 8842As, and an HMP4040 making their way into the lab so I don’t get bummed when using the HPAK kit and wishing the company could just manage to have a quarter the integrity and substance it used to, because I’m a delicate fucking flower who sobs over these things, especially having been born a bit too late after everything — not just this one faceless corporation — has apparently turned to shit.
A cheery morning indeed lol.