I am a hobbyist and also a professional in engineering who has for decades made purchasing decisions.? In my career I have leaned toward buying equipment that is supportable.? Yes now that is getting very rare but in the past it meant a lot of business went to HP/Agilent due to their extensive documentation.? While I was not at huge companies that business still added up to millions of dollars and that documentation was often what tipped the scales.? The HP salespeople I talked to told me I was certainly not the only one who felt that way.
The worst these days is equipment which requires proprietary software to even swap a module, and that software is factory-only with some manufacturers.? When support ends you throw the equipment out as it is worthless even as a parts mule.
Peter
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On 8/26/2024 10:10 PM, pianovt via groups.io wrote:
On Mon, Aug 26, 2024 at 01:00 PM, Frank Mashockie wrote:
As consumers, repairs, or designers we shouldn't allow manufacturers to
continue these repair prevention strategies that ultimately stifle the
sharing of information and community knowledge.
Frannk,
I can speak about this topic from all the vantage points you mentioned. I am a consumer, I do like to repair some of my equipment (but not all), I have designed test equipment at HP, and I own a manufacturing business.
I can assure you that engineers at HP/Agilent/Keysight never spent any time pondering "sharing of information and community knowledge". That just isn't anything that ever crossed our minds. I/we did spend a lot of time thinking about how to make troubleshooting efficient for a service technician. Increasingly, the best solution is to tell the technician how to identify the defective assembly and just swap it because repair requires special tools or knowledge that I could not reasonably expect a technician to have. Most HP/Agilent/Keysight products contain at least one, but often several novel or clever ideas in them. Remember that Keysight at any one time has thousands of supported products.
Nowadays, assembly level repair is in most cases the most efficient repair method. Troubleshooting down to component level is prohibitively expensive. Keep in mind that HP/Agilent/Keysight is using a different business model than, say, Heathkit (which went out of business). Companies that buy equipment want reliable products with minimal down-time. The engineers working at those companies may or may not be enhusiastic hobbyists when they go home, but they are not the ones paying for the equipment.
Finally, consider the implications of Keysight publishing the schematics for a LCD display or power supply which is purchased form an outside vendor. It's hard enough to find a good supplier without asking them to release documentation for the "sharing of information and community knowledge".
Vladan
