It's a bit silly to pretend the choice for A-brands is only driven by ego or incompetence. There are plenty of practical reasons to go with A-brand tools. Having support and calibration services is important if you do any kind of serious work and the trust you can have in them too. Although top brands do make crap products and budget brands make good products the quality and liveability of top tier equipment is often less hit and miss. That can matter when the tool is a means to an end and you need to get on with a job.
This is well said. Just to add, some hobbyists will have advanced knowledge , and some will have no clue and all in between. Those with limited knowledge will have little use for advanced features.
Sadly people on both sides of the fence seem to think that way. My response when somebody asks; is to always buy a Fluke if you need a handheld meter. Is that being a fanboy or jut a reflection of years of industrial experience and being treated well by Fluke. Some companies earn their reputations.
No you're not wrong, Fluke and Keysight are great, but you are privileged citizen of rich country who can't even grasp fact that price of Fluke 87 is the price of monthly salary of menial worker in my country. And my country is far from being poorest there is. It's just not rich.
Also just some responses to you in general.
An analogy:
Most of use might think that it is silly to spend $150 on a ratchet to work on our cars. Others professional or not may disagree, a lot of the time it comes down to subtle things about how the tool works. So too with electronic instruments it often comes down to personal preference!!!
Quality of noname tools became so high lately that it makes no sense anymore for hobbyist to just buy most expensive tools. Duty cycle of occasional use makes cheap tools last long time anyways, and if anything is damaged it's cheap to replace.
If I use tool every day, I will buy pro quality tool. Fora tool that gets used only occasionally, i just buy something that does the job. It will last long time because it's not being used much.
Now all of that being said I still don't understand why a hobbyist would buy a brand new scope anyways. Especially somebody new to the hobby and still not sure of their direction.
This was done to death before. Only f***ing country that has used instrument market that makes any sense is USA. In rest of the world only choice is
new inexpensive. Or expensive.
That is nonsense. It is up to the hobbyist to determine how much is too much and how well a specific device will fit his interest. I run around in the cheapest pickup that meets my needs while others spend hug bucks on 4x4's and never get them dirty. Is the guy that pays an extra $30,000 wrong? The difference in price of an A line scope vs a Chinese scopes isn't that great, compared to what many piss away on high end vehicles.
Similarly people around here spend lots of money on backyard pools that barely get used 3 weeks out of the year. A hobbyist might use a scope twice a week all year long, so which is a better spend on money?
You're confusing concept of freedom and concept of smart rational choice. You have freedom to act stupidly. But that fact doesn't make it smart. Actually, it makes it worse. You had choice, and you deliberately made choice to be stupid. It's double stupid. Freedom of choice is
not legitimization of
any choice to be considered
equally good. Only equally
possible.
And yes, people that buy 30000$ 4X4 and never get them dirty ARE stupid. And assholes that damage environment, make road traffic unsafe to others... Not to mention that they could have bought more appropriate vehicle and put 10000$ in their kids college fund. Or fed some of so many hungry children even USA is full of.. And they would still commute the same.
And just to give you "unamerican" point of view, many people in Europe are looking at those 4 times too big houses with those never used pools (that are useless, because most of them are not big enough for you to swim in them) and think these people are, well,
retarded, for the lack of the better word.
I'm not trying to be inflammatory, just blunt, as you are in your simplistic views, and to show you how non USA people think. Many of those things you attacked in in Pascals biased opinions you opposed with your bias... And I don't even agree with Pascal... I made comments to him before...
Hope you don't get it the wrong way, just being honest.
All the best,