Hameg did, and they were majorly successful. I've still got mine from back then, it seems to be literally indestructable and that scope has been through a lot.
Actually, the major threat in those days emerged not from American or Asian shores but from Russia. They flooded the hobby stores with scopes, meters, bench supplies and whatnot, all at discount prices. I've got some Russian power supplies and used to have a meter but that partially vaporized when a test set-up when berserk.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
I've still got my Hameg too. It's a real trooper. It survived serveral boat anchor/floobydust purges. (Although my trusty old ADM-3 went MIA during one of the first purges. RIP. :)
-- Don Kuenz
Any company can expense $139K. It just doesn't do the big ones much good.
I don't know what the future will bring. That's one big problem with any sort of financial investment, planning, hiring: the government keeps changing the rules and the Fed keeps mucking with the system, sitting on the safety valve and pandering to Wall Street. A sensible business plans, worst case, to survive. That means restraining growth, investment, hiring.
Oh, my car makes no sense at all. As buying a $1400 Tek scope makes no sense when a $400 Rigol is just as good, maybe better.
Tek and Agilent sell a lot of stuff based on the intangible of their brand names. So it doesn't make sense to try to compete on price.
We recently bought a 4-channel, 1 GHz Rigol scope for something like $9K. It's gorgeous. Not low end any more.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
It does make a difference. Once I suggested the purchase of a HP boat anchor in a fairly large company. After some resistance I sat down with the financial guys. "Look, if you buy this used for $4k versus a new one for $40k you can only write off $4k. But what would be your after-tax net effect if you bought the $40k machine?" ... "Umm, well, oh!"
That is exactly why I have my hopes on the next election. For some things it may come too late though.
Wait until your car gets older. My 1987 Audi, by now a fairly high mileage vehicle, still cruises back and forth between Germany and Sweden and not a worry in the sky for its owner. It just keeps on purring. That's the difference between a great car and an ok car.
Yes, especially the screen. I think I saw that when I visited you.
The big three in the US could build such scopes as well at competitive prices if they wanted to. Much of the manufacturing is totally automated anyhow. And what is not could be outsourced. But we could keep the engineering know-how in the country if we'd really put our minds to it. It's just that there no longer seems to be a willingness. Then the same thing will happen that did in auto: When the first VW Beetle and the first li'l Honda Civics showed up Detroit scoffed. When they saw the first Audi and the first Toyota Crown it was more like "Oh s..t! They'll eat us alive!". And then they ate them alive.
We've done it in medical ultrasound. That market is very similar to scopes, you have low-end to high-end at fairly low production volume. Toshiba, Aloka, Hitachi and others tried to invade our turf many times but they always bit into granite, we didn't let them win. You could buy an ok lower-end machine there and some of the upscale ones were ok. But if you wanted performance it was usually either ATL or Acuson.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Yeah, at my PPoE the IT support folk are fussing about having to support iPads now.
?-)
--- I missed this one the first time around.
"Hewlett-Packard" has always had a certain cachet, associated with quality and cleverness, which the company decided to associate with its line of consumer computer products and disassociate with its line of test equipment.
Brilliant move.
The HP mystique and logo tacked onto consumer goods established it as a major player, and those of us who know and love HP will recognize that Agilent is still HP.
As is Avago.
-- JF
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