Hi, Danny.

R&S could be more of a wet dream than HP, depending on the model!

Back at the late, great Powerwave in the early 2000's, HP/Agilent spectrum analyzers were on most engineers' benches, but the R&S units were few and far between, due to the cost.

Same at Broadcom (2006 to 2016) during my stint there, come to think of it.

Jim Ford

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

-------- Original message --------

From: DANIEL RAFFERTY <daniel1967@...>

Date: 7/25/19 7:04 AM (GMT-08:00)

To: [email protected]

Subject: [HP-Agilent-Keysight-equipment] What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?

Hello All

I don't often post to the list, but I do read its traffic with interest :-)

It's not a piece of HP test equipment before anyone has a "wet dream".
Its a piece of Rhode & Schwarz test equipment that I rescued from a skip
which was destined to go to landfill.

By rights I shouldn't have done it, but I managed to get permission from
my line manager to take it away as there was nothing classified about
it. That organisations policy was everthing gets crushed and dropped
into a landfill,? rather than relieve the bruden on the tax payers and
sell expensive usable test equiment onto small businesses and private
individuals.

It still works, but its MMI has a few bugs and I was thinking of putting
on Ebay (my head says Yes!).
But my heart says I should hold onto it, as its a rare beast.

Best Regards

Danny G7TTR

I see that Keysight is now going to go the route of not providing any service adjustments on future products and of not providing any repair parts. The exception, of course, is to our own service centers.? They want to eliminate any 3rd party repair/cal facilities so that Keysight will get the money instead.? Supposedly, this is to ensure high quality repair/calibrations.? Of course, this tends to prevent any hobbyist from doing their own repair and any Keysight repair will probably be outrageously expensive for any non-corporate entities.?

We have already been instructed to remove all adjustments from our line of network analyzers.? We said no...(actually, hell no!)? Fortunately, our manager backed us up on this for now, but it is just a matter of time before this becomes standard Keysight policy on all instruments.? I don't think Bill and Dave would approve of this strategy, but it is very hard to get their current opinion or get them involved!? I can see it may soon be time to retire.

I see that Keysight is now going to go the route of not providing any service adjustments on future products and of not providing any repair parts. The exception, of course, is to our own service centers.? They want to eliminate any 3rd party repair/cal facilities so that Keysight will get the money instead.? Supposedly, this is to ensure high quality repair/calibrations.? Of course, this tends to prevent any hobbyist from doing their own repair and any Keysight repair will probably be outrageously expensive for any non-corporate entities.?

We have already been instructed to remove all adjustments from our line of network analyzers.? We said no...(actually, hell no!)? Fortunately, our manager backed us up on this for now, but it is just a matter of time before this becomes standard Keysight policy on all instruments.? I don't think Bill and Dave would approve of this strategy, but it is very hard to get their current opinion or get them involved!? I can see it may soon be time to retire.

On Jul 26, 2019, at 8:29 AM, nigel adams via Groups.Io <nigel.adams@...> wrote:

Problem is, and not wishing to sound arrogant in any way...., In their eyes you have had this scope too long and
Tek is expecting you (like Keysight/HP and others) to roll over and buy a new one.

I wonder how they would feel if their shiny new BMW, Mercedes was deemed unrepairable/unserviceable after only 2 years..

Most companies think a lifetime of between 5-10 years is more than enough to keep top end/high tech equipment.

The use of an embedded PC style OS is a real help to them as the moment M/soft or whoever declares end of support then
the test equipment supplier rubs his hands with glee and can happily refuse to support it.

So many companies now are calling EOS for their equipment as soon as they can.
Not nice when it is hard to justify replacements especially in a teaching or research environment.

What is needed is for the salesmen to be nailed to the floor with written statements that they will support and honour
any stated equipment lifetime such that it makes it really hard for them to sell kit.

That will hurt them (the manufacturers the most) - only then will they consider change or lose a sale to up coming
Instrument makers (eg. Korean or Chinese) gradually their performance is improving and hopefully the more advantageous
pricing will help all of us.

Unfortunately gone are the days of beautifully prepared manuals and information about everything to do with the item from
well known TE companies such are HP, Marconi, Tek etc.

Regards

Nigel
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Susan Parker
Sent: 26 July 2019 12:32
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [HP-Agilent-Keysight-equipment] What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?

Dear All,

As Alwyn says: "What really annoys me is the lack of support of equipment which uses older versions of Windows- knowing the policies of that company, I now insist on hearing how long term support will be assured before I buy."

Indeed!!!

I have a Tek TDS7000B series in our group that I am trying to "repair"
because its Windows 2000 OS has gone AWOL from a hard drive failure. Tek refuse to supply the Microsoft Windows restore discs "because of licensing issues" which to me seems entity bogus for a piece of equipment that cost well over GBP20,000 in 2003 (i.e. more than a Hi-End VW Golf Turbo).

We have happenchance found an original Restore Manual and set of discs on e$ay which fingers crossed will resolve the issue, but the lack of support from Tek is astounding for such expensive equipment (TDS7154B).

I am now recommanding Pico Technology scopes wherever possible, even though I personally prefer a 'scope with knobs on it the price differentials are to great to ignore.

Best,
Susan.

Susan Parker, Laser Consortium, Department of Physics, Imperial College London, UK.

On Jul 26, 2019, at 11:09 AM, Tom Gardner <tggzzz@...> wrote:

On 26/07/19 14:50, Peter Gottlieb wrote:
Support for an OS has several angles.

I would hope the negotiated deal for a piece of equipment with an embedded OS would have a lifetime, fully transferrable license for that piece of equipment. So your Win2k scope should have the rights to use that OS until the instrument is scrapped.

I don’t think Microsoft should be forced into infinite support in the form of security updates, although they sort of secretly do for Win2k and XP, if you set the registry flag indicating they are in a bank ATM. But even that can’t last forever. However, if the scope is operated standalone or on a very well protected network as a practical matter a lack of updates doesn’t matter.

In reality it is worse than that; here's three Microsoft horror stories...

Once, while WinXP was still fully supported, I had an "interesting" experience with a Samsung netbook after its hard disk failed. Printed on the underside of the netbook were the WinXP licence and the xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxx product key.

I bought a new hard disk and installed it, then used an external CDROM drive to re-install WinXP from my own WinXP installation CDROM, using the product key on the bottom of the netbook.

WinXP installed in the usual way, quite successfully, as expected.

But when I first rebooted I was confronted by an unfamiliar DOS-box window, which said "Microsoft" at the top and "shan't boot into WinXP because the product key was wrong". What the...?! WinXP had just installed correctly.

I contacted Microsoft, and their service person said it was a Samsung problem, even though this was clearly a Microsoft display.

I contacted Samsung, and their service person said it was a Microsoft problem, quite reasonably IMHO. (But they did try to weasel out by asking the disk drive's manufacturer; the original was Western Digital (!) and by chance the replacement was Samsung)

In the end the only solution would have been to buy another a new hard disk from Samsung, with WinXP pre-installed.

Bugger that; I installed Linux and the 10 year old netbook continues to work well with an excellent battery life since the I set the BIOS to only charge it to 80% of capacity.



The second horror story is Microsoft's PlaysForSure (TM) music. Since Microsoft have turned their servers, you can't move the music you purchased to another hard disk. Makes a mockery of "PlaysForSure", despite Microsoft claiming it was merely "pining for the fjords"


The third horror story happened this month: Microsoft closed down its ebooks platform. It has offered a refund, plus a bit if your carefully curated bookmarks have gone up in aetherial smoke.


See a pattern?

The state of software is a royal mess and is getting worse.

I had an old Thinkpad T60 with Win7 which I was using as a lab bench machine, mostly downloading pdf files of parts for troubleshooting. The disk started to have problems and I was unable to reinstall the OS, despite the worthless product key. I installed Linux on a new drive and all was well, until Linux one day booted to some command line. Nobody could help me recover the OS and guess what? To get the files I downloaded required buying some $65 utility. Gee, I was able to very easily do that from the Windows disk. Start from scratch using another laptop, scrap that one.

Last night my wife asked me to make a copy of a CD with a bunch of files. Easy, right? All built into Win10. I first copy the files to a temp directory, then put a blank CD in. Then I get the option to make a data CD, name it, then move the files to that window. So far so good, and it tells me the files are to be copied to the CD. But there is no button or menu item to start the process! I Google it and it shows the option, but it’s not there on my system. So I remove the CD and put it back in as a last resort and sure enough the option is now shown. WTF? How much do they check this stuff? Making a copy in XP or 7 was foolproof, why did they break it?


Peter

On Jul 26, 2019, at 11:09 AM, Tom Gardner <tggzzz@...> wrote:

On 26/07/19 14:50, Peter Gottlieb wrote:
Support for an OS has several angles.

I would hope the negotiated deal for a piece of equipment with an embedded OS would have a lifetime, fully transferrable license for that piece of equipment. So your Win2k scope should have the rights to use that OS until the instrument is scrapped.

I don’t think Microsoft should be forced into infinite support in the form of security updates, although they sort of secretly do for Win2k and XP, if you set the registry flag indicating they are in a bank ATM. But even that can’t last forever. However, if the scope is operated standalone or on a very well protected network as a practical matter a lack of updates doesn’t matter.

In reality it is worse than that; here's three Microsoft horror stories...

Once, while WinXP was still fully supported, I had an "interesting" experience with a Samsung netbook after its hard disk failed. Printed on the underside of the netbook were the WinXP licence and the xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxx product key.

I bought a new hard disk and installed it, then used an external CDROM drive to re-install WinXP from my own WinXP installation CDROM, using the product key on the bottom of the netbook.

WinXP installed in the usual way, quite successfully, as expected.

But when I first rebooted I was confronted by an unfamiliar DOS-box window, which said "Microsoft" at the top and "shan't boot into WinXP because the product key was wrong". What the...?! WinXP had just installed correctly.

I contacted Microsoft, and their service person said it was a Samsung problem, even though this was clearly a Microsoft display.

I contacted Samsung, and their service person said it was a Microsoft problem, quite reasonably IMHO. (But they did try to weasel out by asking the disk drive's manufacturer; the original was Western Digital (!) and by chance the replacement was Samsung)

In the end the only solution would have been to buy another a new hard disk from Samsung, with WinXP pre-installed.

Bugger that; I installed Linux and the 10 year old netbook continues to work well with an excellent battery life since the I set the BIOS to only charge it to 80% of capacity.



The second horror story is Microsoft's PlaysForSure (TM) music. Since Microsoft have turned their servers, you can't move the music you purchased to another hard disk. Makes a mockery of "PlaysForSure", despite Microsoft claiming it was merely "pining for the fjords"


The third horror story happened this month: Microsoft closed down its ebooks platform. It has offered a refund, plus a bit if your carefully curated bookmarks have gone up in aetherial smoke.


See a pattern?

There's also the fact that they live under the tyranny of the financial quarter and get any long term thinking beat mercilessly out of them.
_._,_._,_
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It is my opinion that this short term, what-can-you-do-for-me-this-quarter mentality is neither good for the company nor society in general. Positive feedback without control almost always ends in disaster.


On 7/27/2019 10:07 AM, Oz-in-DFW wrote:

There's also the fact that they live under the tyranny of the financial quarter and get any long term thinking beat mercilessly out of them.
_._,_._,_
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