[time-nuts] HP Reliability

William H. Fite omniryx at gmail.com
Sun Feb 14 19:20:52 UTC 2016


They don't wonder; they know very well. But they're stuck. Consider
oscilloscopes. Why pay for a Keysight or Tectronix or LeCroy or, God
forbid, a Rohde & Schwarz when, for the vast majority of applications, a
Rigol will give you everything you need at 1/N the cost?

The hugely expensive, overbuilt gear that we grew up with is yesterday's
news; that's why we can scarf it up so cheap on the 'bay. Lots of labs and
manufacturing facilities now consider basic gear like DSOs, SAs, DMMs,
PSUs, and sig-gens as disposable as cell phones.

I'm not sure that is a bad thing.

Bill



On Sunday, February 14, 2016, Scott McGrath <scmcgrath at gmail.com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','scmcgrath at gmail.com');>> wrote:

> HP's greatest advantage of old was being the largest and best vertically
> integrated technology company as innovations in one line of business were
> often applicable to others.    This was right down to things as prosaic as
> packaging and or hybrid  circuit design
>
> Now Keysight is just another mid sized technology company who outsources
> much of their production and wonders why Asian vendors can copy their stuff
> so rapidly and undersell them.
>
> Content by Scott
> Typos by Siri
>
> > On Feb 14, 2016, at 8:31 AM, Adrian Godwin <artgodwin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > HP built their reputation for quality and reliability with test
> equipment.
> > Computers were always considered a bit weird (in a nice way, in the case
> of
> > handheld calculators) but printers have followed the consumer race to the
> > bottom.
> >
> > It's sad to hear that the instrument division are no longer focused on
> > keeping that reputation - perhaps that's why the medical division moved
> to
> > separate the names.
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 11:28 AM, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave
> Ltd) <
> > drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >>   On 14 Feb 2016 09:04, "Perry Sandeen via time-nuts" <
> time-nuts at febo.com
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi,
> >>> It is rather depressing to me to hear RK and others remark about the
> >> unreliability of HP test equipment.
> >>> There is one area where they had outstanding equipment.
> >>
> >> I have a friend with a fairly large lab. He must have 50 signal
> generators,
> >> 15 spectrum analyzers, plus plenty of other stuff. Mainly RF. Most is
> >> HP/Agilent, but he has Rohde & Scwarz and Anritsu too. He finds the HP
> the
> >> most reliable.
> >>
> >> Also Anritsu seem to charge a lot for calibration.  A recent repair to a
> >> modern 6 GHz Anritsu signal generator resulted in the repair bill plus
> >> £1200 GBP (around $1800) for calibration. That particular sig gen, which
> >> was sold for mobile phone use, has an electronic attenuator that will
> blow
> >> up if a mobile phone is transmitted into it.
> >>
> >> He used to think he preferred R&S signal generators to Agilent,  but the
> >> reliability of the R&S has been poorer so his mind has been changed on
> >> that.
> >>
> >> I am sure every company has some products that have been very reliable
> and
> >> some less so, but I would dispute that HP is in general less reliable
> than
> >> other decent makes.
> >>
> >> Support on HP is generally good, with the forums which are answered by
> >> Keysight staff. (An annoying exception seems to be LCR meters and
> Impedance
> >> analyzers developed in Japan. The Japanese engineers hardly ever visit
> the
> >> forums so questions on LCR meters and impedance analyzers generally get
> no
> >> response.)
> >>
> >> There are instrument ranges where other manufacturers seem better (e.g.
> >> Keithley for electrometers), but overall HP/Agilent seem the best
> choice to
> >> me.
> >>
> >> I know someone who is looking for a 20.GHz VNA. He just lost out on a
> >> Windows based R&S VNA that sold on eBay for a bit over $7000. There's no
> >> way a 20 GHz Windows based Agilent VNA would fetch so little.  This is
> >> reflected in their higher resale values.
> >>
> >> At least with the older stuff,, service manuals for HP are useful,
> though
> >> modern service manuals are less so.
> >>
> >> Just my opinion.
> >>
> >> Dave.
> >> _______________________________________________
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