can you accept the bugs or problems in some low price oscilloscopes? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: microe
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2014, 02:46:25 am
content: I have noted that SIGLENT and some other low price oscilloscopes manufacturer( comparatively new manufacturers) has got more and more attention. For the low price, these oscilloscopes/generators may be not as steady as Agilent or Tektronix oscilloscopes. But I think every product is grown up from problems. So I want to know what kinds of problems or bugs can you tolerate, meanwhile what kinds of mistake or disadvantages you can not take with ?

author: jay
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2014, 04:40:02 am
content: My cheap Hantek crashes about once a month. It's not too annoying. It's measurements drift slowly over time but running the self calibration feature restores accuracy to reasonable level. I find that somewhat disturbing.. Well, it was cheap and otherwise a nice scope.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2014, 06:45:26 am
content: I have as close to zero tolerance for buggy tools as makes no difference.If I'm using a piece of test equipment at all, it's because I'm working on something that has bugs of its own that need fixing. My time, my attention and my customer's money are focused on getting that project working - not the scope.That's the big difference, in my experience, between the established suppliers of high quality test gear and the newer entrants to the market. Companies like Agilent really understand how boringly reliable their kit needs to be, and that achieving a very high standard of usability and reliability is absolutely not optional.The fact that they price their kit accordingly is fine by me, and if competition from cheaper (but less reliable) scopes brings that price down a bit, then so much the better.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2014, 07:29:32 am
content: So far every bit of complicated (=needs lots of software to run) test equipment I have used had bugs or 'shortcomings'. No matter whether it said Tektronix, Agilent, Iwatsu, Lecroy or Siglent on it's label. What is most important is that there is a simple workaround.

author: bwat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2014, 07:47:39 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 14, 2014, 07:29:32 amQuote from: wilfred on August 14, 2014, 07:41:27 amThey saying we were taught at school was "the only bug free code is the code you don't write." Every one of us that writes software has to take a long hard look at how we do what we do. Every one of us that purchases products should ask ourselves if we are too accepting of buggy products.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2014, 09:04:09 am
content: The major players, Tek, Agilent etc have had decades of product and IP development, some acquired by way of acquisitions and have set test equipment pricing accordingly.In recent times their choice to have some products made in Asia have tempted the Asians to give it a go also.Although they have been lagging in product and firmware quality, as most are aware they are catching up fast.When I first looked at getting a DSO, a TDS2012 was a top notch unit costing ~NZ$2.5K and similar spec Asian units ~NZ$1K less.Man how things have changed and will keep changing, it is great that prices have become affordable for so many.Hobbyist EE's buying 100 MHz for their first scope.....unbelievable.Really, are we expecting too much? Sure there are bugs, but without the Asian equipment we will all be paying 3 to 5 times more for gear that would have not advanced in spec to that we see today.The Asians now have a huge established market with loyal supporters and things can only improve IMO as their communication skills catch up with their innovative products.So, select a product supported by a dealer that has good contact with the manufacturer and give him feedback for ongoing product improvement so we all win.The two real worries on my mind are product obsolescence in this "throw away society" world and the "oneupmanship" in competing products, ending with features that very few of us need.

author: electrophiliate
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2014, 10:41:05 am
content: My Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope seems to corrupt USB thumb drives if I use it to create new directories for snapshots.So I just usually save snapshots to the root directory, which works fine.[edit: Now works OK! Possibly was due to a bad flash drive.]

author: liquibyte
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2014, 11:49:41 am
content: Quote from: electrophiliate on August 14, 2014, 10:41:05 amCorrupt as in partition table or corrupt as in files? That's a pretty serious bug either way.

author: 1xrtt
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2014, 11:57:28 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on August 14, 2014, 07:41:27 amIt's all about expectations. Bugs on expensive tools are less tolerated because one would think the supplier took the necessary steps to ensure reliability and thus, are pricing the gear accordingly. One would not expect so much on a cheap device. "You get what you paid for", isn't it?As a hobbyist, I have an Owon SDS7102V and I'm reasonably satisfied with it. I was annoyed at first by the noise issue and get an affordable Tek 2336 on Ebay, which works fine (as expected), but in the end, I use more the Owon, and the 2336 only when I need more than two traces.One other thing that I don't like on the Owon is the battery life. At first, it lasted two-three hours but six months later it lasts a little over one hour. And if powered off and disconnected from mains, it discharges in about a week!

author: bobcat
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2014, 12:12:55 pm
content: I have always believed that my test equipment should work with few problems. If I am tracing a problem, or analyzing a circuit, I want the scope to work as expected. If it's calibration changes or the software is buggy, how can I rely on measurements? I find random locking up or freezes annoying. I breaks up the test flow and thought processes. My experience has been that the inexpensive scopes require much more time in the long run to get good measurements.

author: electrophiliate
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 02:17:55 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on August 14, 2014, 12:11:11 pmQuote from: liquibyte on August 14, 2014, 11:49:41 amIIRC (it was a while ago), the directory would assume an odd name and would be apparently filled with a bunch of files with garbled names, impossible file sizes, and wildy varied dates decades into the past and future, but I think it was limited to that directory only and the rest of the drive was OK. I think it happened at least twice but not sure if on more than one drive. I took a few measurements today, so I also tried to replicate the issue I mentioned, but unfortunately (fortunately!) was unable to.I started with a blank 16GB drive formatted with FAT32 and after a successful snapshot in a new directory created on the scope I went back to Windows to add a few directories and files with long names and try again. Did the same with a different 8GB drive also formatted with FAT32 and that worked OK too. The scope wouldn't accept NTFS formatted drives and said something about not supporting multiple partitions (there was only one NTFS partition). Firmware is 00.04.01, I never bothered to update it.Thanks for prompting me to have another look at the issue. Although it wasn't really a big deal to me since I don't take many snapshots and don't need to create directories when using the scope, I do feel somewhat better knowing that it was probably an anomaly. I also wouldn't want anyone been turned off a classic basic scope based on my anecdote. I have another 8GB drive which has been giving me problems lately and I suspect it is the same drive which I observed the corruption on earlier, so perhaps the flash drive itself was the true culprit.

author: liquibyte
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 03:08:56 am
content: Quote from: electrophiliate on August 15, 2014, 02:17:55 amMy money would also be on the drive failing. I've had something very similar happen to me in the past and it was the drive on its way out. I've also had them fail at the partition table level, two in two years. The first time I was able to recover my files off of it, the second it was the OS partition so I just reinstalled on a new drive.

author: don
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 04:42:16 am
content: Personally I have very low tolerance for bugs. I cut my teeth a tds754D from tek and it always worked, bug free. Even today, almost 20 years later, I have all key sequences in muscle memory and I know exactly what will happen if I press a sequence of buttons. No surprises. Top notch accuracy. I've since used many scopes from tek, agilent or lecroy. All very reliable. Recently I tried a lower cost buggy scope. HW was nice, I liked the scope. But the firmware was too premature and I could not trust it. Too many bugs and I use scope at home for work, not hobby. If for a hobby I'd probably be okay with it. But if I have a hot issue at work I have no interest in debugging a tool. This is why tek or agilent high end equipment is so expensive. Built like tanks and reliable. Almost boring because they are so reliable, just giving you reliable data day after day. Years and years of development effort behind every scope for the most mundane feature to guarantee it works. And what people do in SW today they invented and implemented in hardware.Point being, low cost buggy scope are still great if you can tolerate the issues when they happen. Hopefully issues will be fixed, and in a year or two scope will be solid and you can deal with inconvenience until then. It just depends on what you use scope for. I think low cost scopes that push the envelope are really needed. Market demand and needs will steer them accordingly.

author: Wuerstchenhund
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 05:34:17 am
content: Quote from: don on August 15, 2014, 04:42:16 amI'm 100% with don on this, my personal tolerance for bugs is very low. The same is true for stupid UI designs btw. For me it's mostly Agilent and Tek at work and now LeCroy at home. I also bought a Siglent SDS1102CNL for a project that required a 'throw away' scope. The hardware was surprisingly well built (the encoders could have wiggled a little less, and the rotary knobs could have been a bit less cheap, though), but the software side was really poor. Aside from that the UI was obviously designed by someone who knows nothing about proper UX design, there were quite a few instances where the scope didn't do what it was expected to do. Trying again often lead to the desired result but for a measurement tool this is unacceptable. I'm using a scope because I want to check some UUT for faults or because the UUT has a known fault. And really, the last thing I want is having to guess if it's the device or the scope that causes the problem.I had quite a few DSO for personal use (Philips PM3320A, HP 54510A, HP 54542A, some 54600 Series, some Teks), and while the very old ones were certainly limited in capability they still have been highly reliable and always did what I expected them to do. The same is true for my current LeCroy scopes. For example, my WaveRunner LT264M is now 11 years old (it's one of the last WR2 Series scopes), but I yet have to come across a software bug or an instance where it doesn't do what I expect it to do. I can also say the same for my Windows based WaveRunner 64Xi. Obviously there have been bugs in their software, too, but most of them were minor problems in certain use cases, and LeCroy was (and for the 64Xi still is) pretty good in fixing them quickly.These low cost China scopes probably are fine if you can live with the bugs, and they also put some pressure on the big names in terms of pricing. But the Chinese have to learn that they have to get the software right *before* putting a product on the market. This may not be that important for cell phones or media players, but it definitely is for test and measurement stuff.Which is one of the reasons why I think that used big name scopes are still a good alternative to a new China low-end scope.

author: microe
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 06:18:33 am
content: Quote from: Wuerstchenhund on August 15, 2014, 05:34:17 amIn fact, when doing some industry research, such as processing HDTV signals, the Agilent, Tek or Lecroy oscilloscopes is a must. But for high schools, hobbies and some relatively low request industry, I think the SIGLENT, Hantek or some other comparatively new manufacturers can be taken into count.

author: Mark_O
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 06:23:15 am
content: Quote from: electrophiliate on August 15, 2014, 02:17:55 amI observed the same behavior on my DS1102CD Rigol, a number of years ago, with the latest update of firmware for that model before they abandoned it.Perfectly good USB stick, before and after. I had used it on the Rigol in the past. Wrote ~20 screen shots to it during a power supply test session, and it pissed all over the root directory, destroying hundreds of files. I spent hours recovering what I could. Lesson learned: don't trust the Rigol FAT writing abilities, and always use a dedicated memory stick. Not just one you happen to have handy in your pocket.

author: Orange
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 09:12:53 am
content: I never use USB sticks to store precious files

author: rollatorwieltje
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 11:03:58 am
content: USB sticks are disposable memory, not something you keep anything valuable on. I've lost count on the number of failed sticks.I absolutely hate bugs. Can't tolerate them. I tend to look for devices that have limited amounts of features, but have those features implemented well.

author: bwat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 11:50:48 am
content: I've never had USB sticks fail on me. My git repositories are tarballed, compressed, encrypted, then copied over to a USB stick and my mobile phone at the end of each working day. I use a different stick each day of the week. My sticks and phone are pretty old now (> 4 years). Not a single failure yet.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 07:19:48 pm
content: Consider yourself lucky. I have had several problems mostly caused by Windows even though I always use the 'software eject' provided by Windows first and then physically remove the USB drive.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 07:34:32 pm
content: I tested a USB stick by using it for install of Ubuntu as a live distro. Left swap enabled on the drive and left it idle for 2 days. At the end of the 2 days the 4G Kingston stick had stopped working and I had a kernel panic message, unable to acess swap space. Found bad blocks on the drive, so formatted it again and tried again to kill it further. It just kept on working for 2 days, but I tossed it after the second time.

author: Mark_O
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 07:49:15 pm
content: Quote from: rollatorwieltje on August 15, 2014, 11:03:58 amFirst of all, that's an opinion, not a fact. Based on one set of experiences. I have many USB sticks with valuable content on them. Of course, it's never myonlycopy. But then, nothing I have that's important is ever my only copy, for very long.QuoteI'm sorry to hear that. It would certainly explain your negative POV. OTOH, I've had many, many of them. And only 1 that ever failed completely. And a couple others that developed sporadic, distributed errors, that I decommissioned (aka, threw away).

author: Mark_O
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 07:54:23 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 15, 2014, 07:19:48 pmThat's an indictment of the software, not the memory. I.e., how well (or badly) Windows drivers handle removable media. The same thing can and does apply to external hard drives. I.e.,anyremovable media.It's like my bad Rigol experience I mentioned above. That had nothing to do with the USB stick and everything to do with the shitty Rigol software, that decided to write BMP files over the root directory structure.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 07:55:06 pm
content: Quote from: SeanB on August 15, 2014, 07:34:32 pmI hope you realize that leaving swap enabled on a USB stick is areally BAD idea. That will exhaust the limited write endurance of the flash extremely quickly.

author: plesa
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 07:59:04 pm
content: Quote from: microe on August 14, 2014, 02:46:25 amI'm not familiar with Siglent, only with Rigol. But is seems to be in the same segment. I was quite dissapointed byt their support when I asked for new version of firmware for PSU to fix some bugs. They never send me an answer nor firmware. So support is zero. This removed Rigol brand from list of suppliers of equipment for my job and my hobby purposes as well.It was funny that during my study we have much more better equipment compared to equipment when I started my first job.So the low priced equipment is from my perspective focused only to hobby use and not for universities where you are making large quantities purchases with totally different prices.The bug itself is not a big issue, but the willingness of supplier to fix the bug - it is what counts.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 09:17:39 pm
content: I that respect Siglent seems to do OK. There where some issues in the early firmware of their SDG1000 series generators which they fixed later on. It gave me enough confidence to buy one of their higher end scopes.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 09:51:53 pm
content: Quote from: plesa on August 15, 2014, 07:59:04 pmNot a good look.Quote from: tautech on August 14, 2014, 09:04:09 amToo often price is the driving factor for hobbyists spending their hard earned coin when one should be thinking"what if something goes wrong?"

author: bwat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2014, 10:13:25 pm
content: Quote from: janoc on August 15, 2014, 07:55:06 pmFound this:http://www.usenix.org/event/fast10/tech/full_papers/boboila.pdfNow for some back of the envelope calculations. 2 days = 2*24*60*60 = 172800s. Block endurance = 10^6 cycles. So, 58 cycles per second to be expected for a new USB disk failing after 2 days. That's a lot of swapping!Disclaimer: I read that paper very quickly.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2014, 10:43:24 am
content: Quote from: bwat on August 15, 2014, 10:13:25 pmThat number is fairly reasonable considering how swap in Linux works. And if the machine was low on physical RAM and had to swap more often ...Also, remember that the 10^6 cycles is a mean value. Your USB stick can die after 1000 cycles already. Or after 10^7 ones if you are really lucky and the device has good wear leveling. Flash going into USB sticks is also rarely the best quality available.

author: bwat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2014, 11:19:08 am
content: Quote from: janoc on August 16, 2014, 10:43:24 amReally? That's 58 cycles per second I calculated was for each block which will fail, not 58 cycles per second for the whole USB stick. That's eitherverylittle RAM or processes which havebigworking sets.Quote from: janoc on August 16, 2014, 10:43:24 amLook at table 2 on page 5. The spread isn't that great.Disclaimer: I've still not read that paper properly.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2014, 12:02:48 pm
content: It was an old drive, and I was not worried about it dying, just wanted to try out another OS on my EEEPC and did not want to do that to the original non replaceable SSD inside it. I did go in and add extra drives to the existing USB ports on the board so I could actually have usable storage instead of the 2G it came with. Now it runs Puppy off a SD card in the SD slot, and as that all fits in RAM it will do nicely as a holiday PC.

author: Wuerstchenhund
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2014, 01:17:22 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 15, 2014, 07:19:48 pmHow do you know the problems were caused by Windows?And you're aware that just clicking on 'eject' isn't enough but you have to wait until drive access stops (i.e. the stick's LED stops blinking) and Windows actually tells you that it's now safe to remove the device? Because when clicking 'eject' Windows flushes the OS write cache for that drive and closes all open connections so that it can be dismounted orderly. This can take several seconds, and if you pull the stick out while it is doing that you're very likely to cause filesystem corruption.I use USB flash drives a lot, and the only time I have seen problems is when sticks were ripped out before Windows did complete its sync process before dismounting it, when they were at the end of their lifetime (some of my very first 1GB and smaller memory sticks are beginning to fail, but many of them are now 10 years old), or when someone bought or got a cheap-ass China fake which either was built using recycled memory (yes, they really do build memory sticks with reclaimed memory!) or which lied about its capacity (i.e. could merely hold 1GB instead of 8GB, the typical China fake). I also had a few instances with FAT file system errors when a large stick (>2GB) was used with my Siglent SDG1020 AWG (but that was only with early firmware so I guess Siglent has fixed that in later versions).There are many reasons why USB memory sticks can fail, aside from the things I mentioned like user error or used memory/fakes there are many others. So how do you know it was caused by Windows? Or are you just asuming because you couldn't figure out what the real problem was? Unless of course we talk about Windows95 here.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2014, 11:08:02 pm
content: Quote from: Wuerstchenhund on August 16, 2014, 01:17:22 pmBecause it is WindowsQuoteI do know that O0

author: Wuerstchenhund
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2014, 11:33:22 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 16, 2014, 11:08:02 pmBecause it is WindowsSo in short it's the usual Windows bashing then.

author: adam1213
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2014, 12:27:51 pm
content: What confidence should one have in a piece of test equipment that crashes as it wasn't tested properly?

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2014, 12:28:13 pm
content: Quote from: Wuerstchenhund on August 17, 2014, 11:33:22 amNo. It's just an observation that my Linux system runs with much less hick-ups than my Windows system. If something goes wrong unexpectedly Windows just crashes where Linux gracefully recovers. It's all about the quality of coding under the hood.Recently my Windows machine wouldn't recognize USB sticks at all. Connecting a USB hub made the system almost crash (needed a reboot to fix). I've never seen similar behaviour from Linux.I have one piece of equipment which runs Windows but it only runs just Windows and the software which comes with the test equipment. No other applications at all!

author: Wuerstchenhund
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2014, 05:03:49 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 17, 2014, 12:28:13 pmI'm sorry but the thing about "quality" is nonsense. Like any modern OS, Linux does have it's fair share of flaws, and there are things in it that are outright stupid. And I can assure you that Linux (like any other OS) can fail miserably in some situations.In addition, just because an OS seems to have 'recovered' on the surface (i.e. to the user it looks like everything is normal) this doesn't mean that there isn't some shit going on somewhere down below running havoc or shredding your file system. Believe it or not but sometimes it's actually an advantage if the OS stops execution when a severe problem occurs. Especially in areas where the data is actually worth something.QuoteEver considered that maybe something with the hardware or some drivers might be the issue? For example, Windows since Vista relies on a correct ACPI table in the BIOS, which wasn't always the case in many standard mainboards. Linux contains some workarounds for some of them, and often falls back to ancient PnP. The advantage of course is that this mitigates to some extend for the crappy BIOS whith bugs that shouldn't be in there in the first place. On the other side ACPI allows Windows much better control over hardware, i.e. power management capabilities.Of course often it's difficult finding the cause of a problem, but it's silly to believe that the reason for your USB problems is with Windows, an OS that runs of millions of PCs (aside from serving as the backend platform for most large enterprises around the world), and is used with probably the largest range of USB accessories day in and day out.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2014, 05:58:39 pm
content: Hint: VHS versus the technically superior Video2000. The best system isn't always the most popular. McDonalds probably serves more food than a 4 star restaurant but does that make the food in the 4 star restaurant crap?

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2014, 10:03:49 am
content: QuoteI'm not sure that's true for USB sticks. Windows recognises two types of external storage: cached and uncached (basically, it is whether write-through is enabled or not). A cached device requires proper ejecting so that the cache can be written (if it's dirty). That applies to external hard drives and the like.However, I think USB sticks are treated - by default - as write-througgh devices, so the write operation doesn't return until the data is actually on the stick. This is because Windows expects the user to whip the stick out without thinking about proper eject sequences, and for the user it means that as soon as that file copy says done it really is done.You can change this setting to allow caching, and then the stick will appear to bemuchfaster. But then you have to use the eject method to prevent data loss.

author: Gribo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2014, 03:22:16 pm
content: Back OT, Test equipment should be reliable. If there are bugs in the device's software, how can I trust its readings? One example I encountered in the past was a bug in the Ethernet port of the Agilent's N9320A ( made in China..). It rendered the port unusable.

author: Wuerstchenhund
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2014, 06:09:51 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 19, 2014, 05:58:39 pmOh yes, I remember Video 2000 quite well. It was certainly a nice VCR system at its time (I had several Grundig and Philips V2000 VCRs back then).Was it technically superior than VHS and Beta? Yes.Was it better? No, not really.One reason why it wasn't more popular was because it suffered from lots of flaws. For example, Philips was stupid enough to violate their own standard with their first recorders (Grundig used U loading while Philips used M loading, and the first Philips V2000 recorders had their Audio/Sync head mounted on the wrong spot so that tapes recorded with a Grundig recorder had a roughly 0.5s delay in audio). Both Grundig and Philips recorders (as their rebadges sold by by Nordmende, Siemens, Loewe and others) have generally been very unreliable (the Philips VR2000 Series suffered from mechanical issues because of the wire system in its M loading mechanism, and the older Grundig 2x4 recorders failed because of crappy connectors, overheating controllers and bad ESD protection), only the later Grundig 2x4 and 2x8 recorders were more reliable, but at that time Video2000 had already lost. The tapes also suffered from low reliability, mainly because of the complex cassette housing and because of the uneven wear caused by V2000 only using half of the tape width.Another reason V2000 failed was because essentially it was a product of only two companies (Grundig and Philips) which were reluctant to offering licenses as they both wanted to be sole OEMs for the platform. VHS on the other side was widely licensed at low costs, and even Sony offered licenses for its Betamax system (non-Sony VCRs could only call themselves 'Beta', though).V2000's only real advantage was its playtime (2x4hrs per tape at SP, later 2x8hrs per tape at LP), but VHS quickly catched up with 4 head LP recorders which offered much lower per hour media costs than Video 2000. The same is true for other features (i.e. ATF)."Technically superior" does not necessarily mean "better". Video2000 was an over-engineered insular solution which took forever to sort out its many issues and was priced way out of the market. VHS on the other hand was kept simple, and the cheap licensing meant that it was offered by many manufacturers who all could compete in price and features. The picture quality was also good enough, and subsequent improvements (i.e. Stereo and later Hifi, LP, auto tracking, index search, S-VHS etc) were quickly introduced.Sorry but in the eyes of consumers world wide VHS clearly was the better system.QuoteNot sure what this has to do with the discussion, but I get the feeling you somehow seem to believe that Linux is written by elven coders in unicorn land where thanks to pixie dust everything is bug free and highly optimized. I'm sorry to disappoint you but this isn't the case. Linux used to be hacked together mostly by volunteers of which many had no clue about conceptual code design or proper software development, and nowadays it's mostly maintained by experienced developers similar to those working on Windows or OS X. That doesn't mean there still isn't a lot of shit code in Linux or other FOSS programs (which there is), though.So if you want to suggest that Windows is the McDonalds food and Linux the 4 star restaurant then sorry but this comparison is nonsense.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2014, 07:17:04 pm
content: Quote from: Gribo on August 20, 2014, 03:22:16 pmYou should always have an idea what the reading should be. Just blindly relying on what a piece of equipment reads is useless to begin with. After all you could have the probes connected wrong.

author: nuno
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2014, 08:12:00 pm
content: Hey guys, these OT messages are ruining a very interesting topic, will you please open a new one and move them there? Thanks.Quote from: WuerstchenhundI'm just waiting a bit for the new firmware version for my DS1104Z-S to fix the UI issues with the font size, if it doesn't get to a reasonable point, I'm returning it, and if more people did the same they would take more care with (stupid) bugs. As a programmer by profession it deeply frustrates me to see sw bugs, specially the "stupid" ones (and annoying), to ruin an otherwise good instrument. If we tolerate them, they'll keep coming.I wish Rigol and other manufacturers released hw interface specs for older models, even if no software at all.

author: microe
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 21, 2014, 12:56:41 am
content: For my own experience, these low price oscilloscopes are not such untolerable. Most times, it tests quite well, maybe not perfectly though.There is just some area such as high-tech research that needs oscilloscopes cost thousands dollars. For popular uses, I think the low price oscilloscopes are good. At least they meet for our hobbies.

author: DanielS
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 21, 2014, 01:36:33 am
content: Quote from: Gribo on August 20, 2014, 03:22:16 pmThat depends on the bug's nature. Many of them have one or more work-around but the operator still needs to recognize a potential glitch when he notices one and how to double-check it. If you see weird things in a slow time base, you can zoom in to determine if it was an intensity grading glitch or a real signal but you do need to be aware of the glitch to know how to confirm it.Same goes with any instrument: if you are not aware of potential traps, you are likely to fall straight into them and waste tons of time chasing the wrong or nonexistent issue.

author: Wuerstchenhund
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2014, 03:18:59 pm
content: Quote from: nuno on August 20, 2014, 08:12:00 pmSorry, seems I got carried away a bit.QuoteIt shouldn't really that difficult to allow selectable font sizes, but then that would require that the UI is flexible enough to accomodate it. I'm frankly disappointed by the UI of many modern test instruments.QuoteIndeed. But to be fair, at least for UI issues it's not really their fault as every manufacturer should have some Human Factors guy who knows about proper UI design. In my experience most people that are good in software development (i.e. programming) are usually bad UI designers and vice versa.

author: rollatorwieltje
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 25, 2014, 03:14:37 pm
content: Quote from: Mark_O on August 15, 2014, 07:49:15 pmThe company I work for uses USB keys in a product for service purposes. It's rare when a key lasts for more than a year. Those are Kingston sticks, not some generic garbage. All kinds of failure modes, often a corrupted partition table (not even counting the broken connectors). I suspect these USB keys don't have any sort of data integrity checks built in, just a piece of flash and a dumb memory interface. These sticks are basically only used a a license dongle and occasional software updates. That's why I don't trust them at all.

author: Wuerstchenhund
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2014, 05:05:13 pm
content: Quote from: rollatorwieltje on August 25, 2014, 03:14:37 pmIt really does get more difficult to find a good USB memory stick. The reason for that is that USB drives nowadays are garbage products. Most brand name sticks come from the same source as no-name sticks, and use the same crappy memory (often rejects or even reclaimed), with very little over-provisioning. Back in the old days, when USB sticks were a bit more expensive, brand name sticks were usually pretty well built. Not anymore. Especially the ultra compact sticks seem to have a shelf life of fresh milk.I have a ton of memory sticks, which all lasted much longer than a year (and some of them have seen quite a large amount of write cycles). Many of the older ones are HP, made for their servers (ProLiant) and workstations (so not the cheap consumer stuff), of which many are older than 5 years and still work fine as boot drive for VMWare vSphere and Citrix XenServer. I also have some newer Samsung sticks which seem to be pretty reliable.I recently bought some rubberized Kingston USB 3.0 sticks (can't remember the model), lets see how long they last.

author: andrewwong2000
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2014, 02:15:00 am
content: I've been reading the Siglent and Rigol DSO and MSO threads with some amusement.Having gone that way, assessing the pros and cons of the Chinese equipment and gone back to proven brands..I wonder what Keysight or Tek could achieve if they produced a "crowd tested and developed" product. Great hardware platform.. SVN firmware.Some people here have so much time on their hands to mess with half finished products - as a company I would imagine it's like a team of somewhat highly skilled beta testers for free.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

author: Mr Carlsons Lab
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: August 27, 2014, 02:46:19 am
content: Re: can you accept the bugs or problems in some low price oscilloscopes?No! Do the job right, then sell your product. This crap is all to common these days. Seems like many companies are putting their products on the market before proper testing. "Oh, we'll send you a firm ware update to fix the bugs."Can you imagine if us guys that design circuit boards sent our products out, faulty right from the get go..... "Oh sorry, we'll have to send you that flip flop that we forgot to populate in the board, by mail."In all reality, they know what's going on, its just about getting it out the door faster, (so they get their money) then making you wait for the fix while the guys at the factory are writing the proper firmware. (and in some cases not)Times sure have changed.

author: Wuerstchenhund
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2014, 05:36:31 am
content: Quote from: Mr Carlsons Lab on August 27, 2014, 02:46:19 amHow true. In some way it was better when software was still in EPROMs where rolling out "updates" was much more expensive, so manufacturers had to make sure that at least the worst bugs were stomped out before a product was thrown on the market.On the other side flash-able firmware makes it much easier to roll out new/improved functionality.I guess if more customers would reject products with bugs instead of patiently waiting for the manufacturer to fix them (or, as in many cases, not fix them!) then maybe we would see a bit more maturity in early software releases.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2014, 10:04:10 am
content: Quote from: Wuerstchenhund on August 27, 2014, 05:36:31 amUnfortunately even the 'proven brands' also release products ahead of schedule. The original software (V3.3) which came with my Tektronix logic analyser ($10000 for the mainframe alone when new 12 years ago) was terribly slow to use. I can also point out several bugs in my Tektronix TDS5xx/7xx series oscilloscopes. These are not running version 1.0 of their firmware either.If you buy a new car which happens to be a relatively new iteration of the model then the firmware will contain bugs as well. For example my car (a very popular type & model) was sold in 2006 and yet the firmware is from 2008 fixing problems with mileage and driveability. Usually car dealers do the firmware updates silently without telling the customer. And look how many firmware updates the Tesla Model-S already had:http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showwiki.php?title=Model+S+software+firmware+changelogIt is true the Chinese have to learn a thing or two about testing a product better before releasing it. OTOH their products are at least 2 times cheaper than the competition from the USA AND they will get it right after a while. As others pointed out Siglent releases alpha versions of new products to their dealers to play with. Ofcourse reviews of these will reveal lots of problems and make the product look flaky. The version which is released for sale is perfectly useable albeit not entirely free of bugs.