In article , haf47
@juno.com says...
And now I hear that they desroy their own equipment so they can sell
more new stuff?! Baloney.


You're wearing rose-colored glasses. They absolutely do destroy older
equipment via the trade-in "bounties" collected by resellers such as
Tucker. This is no secret in the industry.

That doesn't make them evil, and it doesn't make them "suck", but it
does (IMHO) demonstrate a lack of respect for the engineering ethos and
tradition that made the company great, while taking perfectly good
equipment out of the ham/hobbyist community forever.

You could divide the T&M equipment world into two categories: stuff like
logic analyzers and signature analyzers that's pretty much doomed to
obsolescence the minute the first pilot build rolls off the production
line; and gear like oscilloscopes and spectrum analyzers that still
serves its original purpose decades after it's out of production. HP,
for instance, made a lot of great test equipment, but a lot of it fell
into the first category and nobody misses it much. For most of its
life, Tektronix focused on the second category: scopes, spectrum
analyzers, video monitoring equipment. In this regard, Tek's main
competition is themselves, which is a problem for them.

Whether I'm a hobbyist or a pro, I can (and do) use an old 2430A DSO and
2467 analog scope to do just about anything I could do with a new $6K
TDS3034B. That means that it's not really in Tek's best interest to
support their customers in their efforts to keep the old gear alive.

I think I am hearing from people who not only do not understand that
"you get what you pay for," but have no use for the quality and
accuracy of the products they are complaining about.

If you actually read the thread, you'll see that folks aren't
complaining about the *products* as much they are the company's support
policies and decision-making strategies. Yes, it sucks that they no
longer honor Howard Vollum's lifetime warranty on 535 power
transformers. It sucks that I can't get a replacement U800 for my 2467.
It sucks that they sold the chip foundry to a bottom-feeding IC company
known for promising the moon and delivering press releases. But Tek is
what it is. They still make good scopes, even if they aren't worthy of
the kind of adoration from the engineering community that they used to
enjoy. And their legal department is actually pretty enlightened when
it comes to granting permission to reproduce out-of-print T&M manuals
and documents.

-- jm

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