I have to admit, that's a pretty crusty looking scope
They should have added 4-channels to the DS2000-series. This business of making different models for every possible configuration instead of just choosing a single useful configuration for each price range is annoying. Soon, Rigol will have 200 active products on the go if they keep this up
Yep, on the DS4000 you can move from 2 ch to 4 ch for $400 at 100MHz and from 2 ch to 4 ch at 200MHz for $300. Rigol should offer the DS2000 series with 4 channel increments at same type of pricing increments rather than forcing you upstream to the DS4000 series with more Mpts and wfm/s than some users need/want, or downstream to the DS1000 series.
Seems like test equipment product managers sometimes spend more time thinking about playing chess with the competition than satisfying the customers. Kind of like a restaurant that says you can only have this bun with that burger and these dressings, and no substitutions – might be easier on the kitchen and in theory more profitable for the time being, but longer term – maybe not so much.
You don't need every option at every price point and infinite flexibility (although with decreasing hardware costs and software invoked features we're headed in that direction), but you need a gracefully incremental growth path that anticipates what the market wants. The winner will be the company that can best anticipate and execute.
Overall, Rigol is doing a fine job but there is room for improvement, and the same with Agilent (especially with their approach to serial decoders and LA functionality limitations on the 2000) – just thresholds and walls that frustrate or annoy customers.
It's like it's all sitting there for the first one of these two to see who really figures it out, Rigol or Agilent. The longer each waits the more they lose some customers to the other (that's the nature of competition no doubt), but I think at the low low end (around $500 and under) and at the high low end (around $1k) and at the low middle (around $1500-$2k) Rigol is very likely taking share from Agilent.
So, while Rigol could improve a few things I think doing so might maybe enable them to run the table on Agilent in the lower realm of the market. For Agilent they either have to abandon the lower realm or step up. Agilent probably doesn't care about the lower realm as they are happy to live with the pro "commercial", "industrial", and "enterprise” markets. Agilent's challenge might be that once Rigol firmly embeds itself at the lower realm Rigol will only getter hungrier to move upstream.
I think there is still a ton of opportunity to figure out how to better leverage the integration of traditional "electronics" and "digital" technology - both in terms of managing users’ digital signals (serial decoding, LAs, etc.) and in terms of how to use digital technology to better monitor, analyze, and manage with test equipment (such as what Rigol is doing with the control and programming features they are bringing to $400 power supplies vs. what you currently get from Agilent for 2x the price).
Without a doubt equipment operating precision and reliability and service and support are huge - especially in the pro markets but it will be a race to see if Rigol can figure this stuff out before Agilent figures out how to embrace the use of digital technology in way that brings more feature richness and better price performance. Clearly, more competition is good for users (by the way, anyone hear anything new from Tektronix lately? Sure would be nice if they came back to play at the level they once displayed.) Just sayin'