>Interesting.
>
>Virtualy all our test instruments are Agilent/HP and they
>generaly stand out head and shoulders above the rest, both
>in in terms of functionality and support.  My biggest
>grumble would be some of the more complex instruments have
>confusing deeply nested menus which take a bit of getting used to.

Yeah, I used to swear that there are only two manufacturers of test gear, HP
and Tek, but in later years there appears to have been a change in the way
HP gear has been designed, or rather the way the user interface interacts
with the user. All manufacturers have there ups and downs, but Agilent seems
to be going through a major fall behind in some areas.

Nowadays I find the Tek gear much more intuitive to use than the Agilent
stuff. This may be something to do with Agilent using one of the Windows
family op-sys behind the scenes on their high end instruments, and the way
that it gets programmed to interface with the user. It may be to do with the
way the company grew as a "computer" company, before the instrument section
was split off, and the wrong bit kept the HP name, but that is another
argument.

I just do not find the user interface as nice to use as the Tek ones. This
does not mean that the equipment does not do an excellent job, but rather
that unit does not feel as ergonomic to me. Some of the push buttons also
have a horrible "squishy" soft feel to them rather than an action that feels
decisive, which leaves me feeling that the switch is starting to fail
instead of giving a positive action.

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