1. Segmented memory without search is not very useful. Simple Rigol DS4000 has that for much less money.
All depends what you want to do. Main advantage of segmented is to capture multiple infrequent events so you can scroll through them later, don't think I've ever had the desire to search through though, just step manually, but I can see that search would be useful for some situations.
It is very useful. Picoscope has something called DeepMeasure.. You take a capture, 100 MSa if you want, and it will go through it, measuring every single period. It will measure every rise time, period, frequency (and more) for every single period. And you can sort it,click on it to see where it is and how it looks, even export it to excel for statistical calculations.. And it will work with thousands of segments of shorter captures..
Very easy to capture something standing out. Lecroy has something similar called WaveScan..
Also on Picoscope, you can capture serial protocol bursts in segments, and decode and search through all of them..
It is very fast, automatic, no need to browse through, unless you want to....
With it's 400 MSa memory R&S is aiming at same type of work...
And if you look at it, RTM3000 has very nice search functions. But they should work for history buffers too, and simple serial protocols need to be included.
In that case I would call RTM3000 pretty much ideal scope for my work..
IF RTM3000 is not able (and wont be able) to do so, my other option is to just rely on Picoscope for MSO/Protocol decode work, and just get something simpler but fast (500 MHz +) for signal integrity work..
But it would be a shame, i kinda like it...
Regards,
Sinisa