>I'm looking at Agilents' offerings.

AFAIK these all come with monochrome screens, and I personally do not like
the update rates/methods on them. They do have the largest capture memories
that I know of at this level though, which is good for zooming in on
waveforms when you have captured on a long timescale. They do have mixed
analog/digital models as well, but never used the digital modes on these,
although a colleague has one.

>I do like Tektronix products; but I'm a
>bit confused as to what they currently carry.

Essentially there are two (three) families at the economy end of the market.
TDS1000 (monochrome) and TDS2000 (colour) are 1/4 VGA units, and the TDS3000
series is colour full VGA with a much nicer display IMHO. The TDS3000 does
have the vertical controls muxed between channels, with the currently
selected channel being the one under control, and the TDS1/2000 has separate
controls for each channel. There is also a version of the TDS2000 with each
channel isolated from all the others which would be nice for working on
things like switch mode mains supplies.

Beyond that you get into the expensive TDS5000/7000 fancy ones.

Personally I do like the TDS2024 and TDS3034 I have. They supply coloured
pieces to clip onto the probe cables which match the screen colours making
trace ident at the end of the probe easy. Very much prefer the screen on the
TDS3034, but for waveform capture you need to use a floppy or get an extra
interface card, which can be GPIB or Ethernet. For the TDS2024 I got the
interface module with CF card port, but it is still pretty slow at saving a
screen dump. The TDS303x come with 500MHz probes, although only a 300MHz
scope. The TDS3000 also has a little tray in the back for keeping probes
when off travelling, although if you need battery mode, the battery goes in
there instead. The tray is not really big enough to hold a mains lead as
well unfortunately, and definitely not when it has a UK plug on it :))

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