Either way, you get a nice, clean printout instead of a blurry Polaroid. It's also relatively painless to transfer data to a personal computer for archiving. Nearly all DSOs have a serial interface or an IEEE 488 interface for connecting the scope to a computer, and some have built-in floppy drives. These interfaces not only let you grab measurement data, they also allow you to program the instrument for use in an automatic test system. Lighter, more portable scopes.
Scopes are much lighter and more portable than they used to be.
Integrated circuits are much smaller than the tubes they replaced, and many functions that once required separate circuits are now performed by a single processor. Scopes have gotten so small that several companies now offer handheld instruments that combine the functions of oscilloscopes and digital multimeters. These instruments are available with bandwidths up to 100 MHz, and in multimeter mode can measure voltages and currents with multimeter precision and resolution. Some DSOs can store previously measured waveforms and display them alongside waveforms the scope is currently measuring. Some scopes take this concept one step further and allow you to store waveform templates.