keysight and agilent ridiclous names? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 04:17:49 am
content: So a thought, they name the equipment keysight and it used to be agilent. Did anyone notice that when you are using agilent equipment you are actually slowed down? the hold HP stuff had dials and knobs for everything, while agilent hammers you with VCR style menu navigation. There is nothing agile about it.The only thing that keysight makes me think of is the fact that you need dongles (keys) to use half the features in the equipment. yea I know why its called keysight, because they lock you out of gear unless you buy the extra key.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 05:53:54 am
content: Equipment old enough to carry a HP logo also had options that can be installed. Often it was in the form of a physical PCBs that needed to be slotted in to the card cage and perhaps a few cables run differently. But sometimes it was just a software feature like for example enabling HP BASIC on your instrument.Aa for menus. That is sort of a necessary evil. Test gear has ever more features packed into it while also shrinking in form factor, so its impossible to have a dedicated button for every feature. If it did the front panel would probably look like one of the control panels in a modern jet airliner where it is a giant board filled with a sea of switches and lights.Be glad they moved onto menus. For example the HP 8566 (Giant old spectrum analyzer) has dedicated buttons for things and it does indeed feel so much better when you can just directly punch in what you want without even looking at the screen. But because this was one of there flagship instruments with tons of features they started stuffing a heap of functionality onto the keys using the Shift key, a lot of functions are not obvious to what they do by the marking next to the button, or are not marked at all. So to 'fix' this HP ended up including a A3 sized piece of nicely laminated cardboard that would slide under the instrument and has a summary of all the key combinations for the advanced features. I suppose if you use it a lot you remember the combinations but still...

author: TheUnnamedNewbie
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 06:44:52 am
content: The modern design is much better.First, there are the functions you need - some of the old spec-ans had very basic capability, but on the modern ones, there is so much functionality that it is just impossible to do with a button-for-everything. And after a while of using it, you will learn where the functions are you need, and learn how to quickly navigate to what you want. I rather have less buttons, but bigger buttons that I can navigate without looking after I learn how to use the instrument, than have tiny buttons for every single function and take half a minute looking for the specific button I need.There is also nothing new about options being locked. This was the same for all manufacturers (I have an old advantest specan that has software-locked options) and for the last decades. It simply makes it cheaper for everyone: If they design one scope, and use software to lock the bandwidth for various price-points, they have to only do one design. The people who then need the bandwidth will pay a bigger part of the NRE cost, and as a result the people who don't, get a cheaper scope.And then there is the simple fact that some things are just software - signal analysis tools on Keysight highest end gear (VSA, infiniium, and all their plugins) are just code running on top of the ADCs (perhaps with some hardware integration, but I can run VSA on my desktop too and do the same I can on our scopes).

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 11:24:06 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on September 27, 2019, 04:17:49 amOr you don't recall the history:http://spurtikus.de/2016/03/30/hp-16500c-logic-analyzer-information/HP started it?

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 12:07:11 pm
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on September 27, 2019, 04:17:49 amOh the names ...Right - hp - we know what that came from no need to explain.Agilent - I don't know what it means but it sounds like a good instrumentation name I guess, what do I know about naming?Keysight? Sucky name. Have no idea what it might mean and it sounds dumb to me. Starting to remind me of the strange prescription drug names they come up with -SingulairTrilafonAbilifyProvengeDuexisVictrelis

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 12:11:55 pm
content: Want stupid names? Check software for Linux.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 12:28:21 pm
content: I prefer the HP85 series then something like a HP70000 (oh boy)worst is keithely though, the source meter for instance

author: n1ist
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 12:33:27 pm
content: Here in New England, the local electricity and gas provider is Keyspan, adding to the confusion.As for Agilent, they forgot to check for anagrams...

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 01:02:43 pm
content: Quote from: n1ist on September 27, 2019, 12:33:27 pmHa! Too Funny!https://new.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=Agilent&t=500&a=nGelatinGenital