On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 20:33:04 -0700, you wrote:

>David Bengtson wrote:
>
>> One of the disturbing trends that I have seen from Agilent is an
>> increased reliance on instruments that are primarily software defined,
>> with software maintance required. This add's a yearly maintance to the
>> cost of an instrument. The RF Boxes I bought will require something
>> like 3k to 4k per year in software maintance to keep them useful. In
>> 20 years, they will probably be useless. Something to thing about.
>
>Well, in theory you won't be trying to run the software on new hardware,
>will you? While I do find it objectionable to have to pay for software =
maintenance,
>I can see the reason for it. Standards are constantantly evolving,

I can certainly see the reason. My concern is that in 10 years, if you
come across this box on ebay, it's going to be useless because of a
lack of software, unless you can pry a hacked copy of the driver
software out of Agilent.=20

Dave

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