Oscilloscope Feature Wars - Agilent Options

[nowlan]

MOD: I've split this into a new topic from the Agilent Hack thread

Have you guys seen this yet?

http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/editorial.jspx?cc=US&lc=eng&ckey=2428917&nid=-53827.3925750.00&id=2428917&cmpid=fbultscp

For a limited time, we are offering you an incredible investment protection opportunity with the new Upgrade to your Ultimate Scope program. Whether you are a loyal Agilent X-Series customer, or looking to purchase your first Agilent oscilloscope, starting April 1, 2014 you can take advantage of a new oscilloscope application bundle that will enable ALL software applications (including DVM and AWG) on your InfiniiVision X-Series oscilloscope, for the price of one option!

Through March 31, 2014 you can also ‘Supercharge Your Bandwidth’ with the oscilloscope promotion for all InfiniiVision X-Series oscilloscopes that offers the next higher bandwidth model for the same price.

http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/editorial.jspx?cc=AU&lc=eng&ckey=2430287&nid=-53827.3925750.00&id=2430287

Upgrade to your Ultimate Scope

Starting April 1, 2014, you can turn on all software applications on an Agilent InfiniiVision X-Series oscilloscope for the price of a single option! Just purchase a single promotional product license, and have all software applications enabled instantly. This is available to both existing Agilent InfiniiVision X-Series oscilloscope customers as well as new scope purchasers.

2000 X-Series
 $500 USD    

DSOX2AUTO
DSOX2COMP
DSOX2EMBD
DSOX2MASK
DSOX2MEMUP
DSOX2SGM
DSOX2WAVEGEN
DSOXDVM
DSOXEDK

3000 X-Series
 $800 USD

DSOX3ADVMATH
DSOX3AERO
DSOX3AUDIO
DSOX3AUTO
DSOX3COMP
DSOX3EMBD
DSOX3FLEX
DSOX3MASK
DSOX3MEMUP
DSOX3PWR
DSOX3SGM
DSOX3VID
DSOX3WAVEGEN
DSOXDVM
DSOXEDK

[grego]

Wow. I am so getting that.

What it tells me though is they have a new scope coming out soon  and want to squeeze the last bit of revenue out of the 2000 and 3000 scope.

[taemun]

@grego:
Either that or this thread has been read by someone at Agilent. Considering that the Power application by itself was around double the all-app pack, it's a fairly big turnaround.

[Carrington]

What it tells me though is they have a new scope coming out soon  and want to squeeze the last bit of revenue out of the 2000 and 3000 scope.

I don't know why, but I've had the same feeling.

[kilobyte]

I hope this announcement was not an 1 april joke

But i think this announcement is a marketing strategy by Agilent.

http://www.agilent.com/about/newsroom/presrel/2014/11feb-em14028.html

If you look at the leaked Information to the comming new Tek Scopes / already available Tek 2000-4000 series the are very similar to the Agilent 2000-4000 series.

So with this offer you will get a software bundle of round about 11000$ for only 800$. So that could be a reason to buy an Agilent scope.

If I had not already got one, I would now buy the DSOX3034A for the price of DSOX3024A

[ben_r_]

Yea definitely a marketing strategy. A new scope is probably on its way out. That being said I have already bought about $400 worth of software upgrades and have three of those listed there. Unless they wanted to give me credit for what I have already spent Ill just be getting the rest of the upgrades via the hack. I will call them on April 1st though and see if I can get them to give me the credit and let me just pay the difference. That would be sweet and Id definitely do that.

[MarkL]

What it tells me though is they have a new scope coming out soon  and want to squeeze the last bit of revenue out of the 2000 and 3000 scope.

Plus, there hasn't been a SW release for 8 months.  Seems Agilent's development focus is elsewhere now.

I feel pretty stupid for buying $5k worth of licenses for a X3104.  So much for any legitimate resale value.  Thanks, Agilent.

[ben_r_]

What it tells me though is they have a new scope coming out soon  and want to squeeze the last bit of revenue out of the 2000 and 3000 scope.

Plus, there hasn't been a SW release for 8 months.  Seems Agilent's development focus is elsewhere now.

I feel pretty stupid for buying $5k worth of licenses for a X3104.  So much for any legitimate resale value.  Thanks, Agilent.

WOW. Yea that would hurt. Im a little angry I spent anything knowing that I could have waited and hacked it and gotten it all for free. Thats why software unlocks have always been worthless and a waste of money. They are never worth anything in the end and usually, if the product is at all popular, someone figures out how to mod/hack it to get it all for free further reducing the value.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I doubt they have a new scope as such. If there really was an all-new scope, why would they offer a bargain-basement license package - this would only make any new model harder to sell to existing users.
My guess is any new scope will the old one but with more/all licenses enabled, to piss all over any new offering from Tek on features, and also make them more competitive with Rigol.

Think about what new features a new model might have - apart from the decodes I can't really think of much you could usefully add.
My 10+year old MSO6034A does pretty much everything the MSOX3000 does (apart from AWG), in some ways better.

What is really left to do in the midrange scope world, other than including decodes as standard?
 

[mikeselectricstuff]

Plus, there hasn't been a SW release for 8 months.  Seems Agilent's development focus is elsewhere now.

Is there actually anything left to fix/do on these scopes?

[ben_r_]

I doubt they have a new scope as such. If there really was an all-new scope, why would they offer a bargain-basement license package - this would only make any new model harder to sell to existing users.
My guess is any new scope will the old one but with more/all licenses enabled, to piss all over any new offering from Tek on features, and also make them more competitive with Rigol.

Think about what new features a new model might have - apart from the decodes I can't really think of much you could usefully add.
My 10+year old MSO6034A does pretty much everything the MSOX3000 does (apart from AWG), in some ways better.

What is really left to do in the midrange scope world, other than including decodes as standard?

I keep applying the same logic and asking people the same question with respect to cell phones, but then like clock work, one year rolls past and there is the next, upgraded with the only things they can really upgrade due to normal technology constraints: better camera, faster processor, and more memory. Doesnt matter that my smartphone from FIVE years ago was screamingly fast enough, but it still seems to be enough to get the people lining up to buy. These days it doesnt matter WHAT else they add, just THAT they add or change or upgrade or update or change the looks of SOMETHING and its a new model and a reason to "upgrade" your old one.

[Lukas]

What is really left to do in the midrange scope world, other than including decodes as standard?

More Memory! Fast memory (DDR3) has become so cheap these days, I'm waiting to see a medium-performance scope with 1GSa of Memory...

Slightly ot: Take a look at the big iron scopes: http://www.home.agilent.com/en/pd-1820590-pn-DSOX93204A/infiniium-high-performance-oscilloscope-33-ghz?nid=-33821.931871&cc=US&lc=eng They offer a memory upgrade to 1G/ch (4G total) for 40000$ ... but that's just a software option, even the base model has all memory builtin. According to free_electron they're using GDDR5, so the cost of the memory is negligible in relation to the frontend, ADC, etc. Customers still seem to think that they're using some special kind of memory, otherwise I cannot explain why anyone would pay 40000 for just a bit of GDDR5...

[mikeselectricstuff]

I'd disagree with both these last points.
Cellphone and testgear markets are totally different. Latter is driven by fashion and sells in such numbers that dev costs are recouped quickly.
Test gear addresses specific requirements, and has a much longer payback time due to much lower sales volumes.

What do most people really need in a scope that isn't already well covered?

Memory - although more is always better, above a few mpts it's very much a case of diminishing returns outside of a few niche applications.

Bandwidth - how many people need high bandwidths but can't afford a higher end scope? probing becomes a limiting factor as well.

Decodes, segmented memory - yes absolutely, and I think the time has come for these to become a standard feature, not an option.
DVM is a gimmick, AWG is nice but more of a bolt-on than a fundamental scope feature.
 
Again, look what has changed over 10+ years between 5/67000 series and X2/3/4 series. Actually very little, apart from lower cost in real terms.
 

[RRobot]

One feature would be a actual large hi-res screen. I've got a MSOX3054a and a MSOx7034a and the 3000 series definitely feels cramped in comparison.

I'll also be getting this 800 deal, its almost hard to believe.

[mikeselectricstuff]

One feature would be a actual large hi-res screen. I've got a MSOX3054a and a MSOx7034a and the 3000 series definitely feels cramped in comparison.

Maybe, but then there's the issue of bench space. And with video out there's always the option of an external monitor, albeit a bit less convenient.

[Rigby]

Doesnt matter that my smartphone from FIVE years ago was screamingly fast enough, but it still seems to be enough to get the people lining up to buy. These days it doesnt matter WHAT else they add, just THAT they add or change or upgrade or update or change the looks of SOMETHING and its a new model and a reason to "upgrade" your old one.

At least in the case of Android, the platform continually gets upgrades which benefit from higher-performance hardware.  Because of this, the phone upgrades are not always completely pointless.  Software marches on, always.  New features always get added, then other features are imagined that require the new features, and therefore the new hardware, to have enough performance to make the phone useful.

I agree with the sentiment of your statement.  Sometimes product manufacturers upgrade things when they don't need to just to hype things up and begin the product cycle anew.

[Hydrawerk]

One day, there will be 12-bit low end oscilloscopes, I hope. Note that ADCs are still the most expensive part of scopes...

[mikeselectricstuff]

One day, there will be 12-bit low end oscilloscopes, I hope. Note that ADCs are still the most expensive part of scopes...

No there won't, because very few people need them. 8 bits will always be cheaper, and is good enough most of the time, not just for the ADCs but for the performance of the analogue front-end and the processing power to deal with the data.

You may see things like higher effective data width at lower sample rates by oversampling, and many scopes already do this in some form.

[taemun]

Honestly, 9-bit would be a reasonable improvement on the DSOX2/3000. You should at least aim for more ADC count than you have vertical pixels.

That said, I can't see any significant changes like ADC resolution; their big fat MegaZoom ASIC is presumably not going to be respun every cycle. Hence the screen res can't change, nor depth

If there's an update coming, Marketing would ensure it's after the KeySight launch (so what, August?).

Other than slapping a B on the end, I can't see what they'd be adding, other than rolling existing features down hill. Anyone for a two-channel AWG on the DSOX3000B?

I wouldn't mind them doing more advanced processing for the FFT (a proper filtering chain in an FPGA), and making all of the Math stuff in general snappier would be nice (although really, not needed).

They could make the Ethernet a standard option, but why bother changing?

I wouldn't mind seeing better probes by default, the N2890A set that comes with the MSOX3054A is decidedly from the 'Economy' range. Tek's MDO3000 ships with 10M || 3.9pF probes. Even the PMK probes that the MSOX4000 series comes with can't compete with that.

This thread seems to have wandered a bit off course....

[Rigby]

This thread seems to have wandered a bit off course....

Don't they all.

12-bit won't happen because there's no genuine need for 12-bit readings for most people/applications.  An oscilloscope isn't meant to be a precision measuring device; it's used to look at waveforms of analog circuitry to help the operator discover and diagnose faults.

Modern scopes add a lot of measurement features because once you've gone digital, it's more or less trivial to add that stuff, and because it's nice to have a single piece of equipment that can offer visualization and measurement at the same time.  It doesn't mean that an oscilloscope should be all things to all people.

[MarkL]

Plus, there hasn't been a SW release for 8 months.  Seems Agilent's development focus is elsewhere now.

Is there actually anything left to fix/do on these scopes?

Plenty.  I submitted a list of about 45 bugs and enhancement suggestions over a year ago that was enthusiastically accepted.  Only one of them, I2C glitch rejection, was addressed.

[EEVblog]

One feature would be a actual large hi-res screen. I've got a MSOX3054a and a MSOx7034a and the 3000 series definitely feels cramped in comparison.

Not going to happen any time soon. The screen resolution is hard coded into the Megazoom 4 ASIC. That is why the newer 4000 model with the bigger screen was crippled with the same resolution.

[EEVblog]

Wow. I am so getting that.
What it tells me though is they have a new scope coming out soon  and want to squeeze the last bit of revenue out of the 2000 and 3000 scope.

Wow indeed!
Maybe they do have an upgrade in the works, because this is certainly spilling all your marbles.

[mikeselectricstuff]

One feature would be a actual large hi-res screen. I've got a MSOX3054a and a MSOx7034a and the 3000 series definitely feels cramped in comparison.

Not going to happen any time soon. The screen resolution is hard coded into the Megazoom 4 ASIC. That is why the newer 4000 model with the bigger screen was crippled with the same resolution.

It's not out of the question that they could have a slightly upgraded ASIC for higher resolution and/or more memory.
However the license bundle does smell like a quick way to make people either buy Agilent or at least hold off for a while, presumably due to something new from Tek - I can't think why else they would announce a deal like this so far ahead, unless it's part of the Keysight name relaunch.

[Someone]

I feel pretty stupid for buying $5k worth of licenses for a X3104.  So much for any legitimate resale value.  Thanks, Agilent.

Yes it is rather rude to devalue customers existing units, T&M equipment has historically been able to hold its value well and the options even more so.

Of note is they don't enable the MSO function in the "ultimate scope" upgrade, and probably don't open up the whole 8M of memory in the 2000 series.