While a trigger hold-off function is sometimes useful, the fact that it is lacking on the picoscope never really has bothered me, as typically I can find a triggering solution without it.
I guess you mainly use your scope for analog tasks, I make an heavy use of serial port messages transmitted in deterministic way to "tag" analog signals in closed loop systems so I need to capture & store segments starting precisely from the first falling edge of the first byte of the packet, of course in conjunction of analog signal (at least one).
Depending on the combination of packet length, packets time interval and DSO horizontal scale it could be necessary to use trigger holdoff.
The reason why I'm considering to use a USB DSO is that in some cases it's much easier to bring a small box operated and supplied directly from a laptop, here the reason of my purchase.
The 2204A analog specs are enough for my purpose but not the small memory depth, I was hoping to use the streaming mode to solve this (1MS/s it's enough) but I soon found out the impossibility to operate in that way I need, that is to set both sample rate & sample length at the same time to obtain acquisition segments of about 100-200 ms length.
To let you better understand, engaging the "Progressive Mode" with 10ms/div horizontal scale will allow also the 2204A to collect 100ms segment @ the right sample rate (at least 200KS/s) ... but it's impossible because Picoscope enables this feature from 100ms/div, so with a minimal segment length of 1 second.
Therefore it is necessary to use an higher model with a bigger acquisition memory, but before to consider that I have to understand if exist a way to solve the trigger holdoff matter.
Please let me know if there is a "trick" to obtain a similar functionality.
I have been a longtime user of Picoscope (since the ADC212), and still quite like my 5442B. But I do which their software (especially the FFT part) would become more feature rich (peak analysis functions, decent overlay functionality, normalisation…).
I also own an Analog Discovery, and their “Waveforms” software is much better in many aspects, but not their hardware. Still, maybe when they are finally finished porting their software to Picosoft, new features will again be implemented.
Which port are you referring to ?