An interesting update about o-scopes and warranties.
As you have read, I have a Tek 2024B oscilloscope. It didn't come with a life-time warranty, but it was very generous: 3 years if I did nothing, 10 years if I registered the card in the box, and five if I sold it after registering it. As well as I can remember.
So, it's a year after this post originally came out. I have the Tek sitting on a bench at work doing longterm testing on a circuit. It's in the third day of monitoring and as I'm leaving for lunch I had a quick look at the screen and take off. I come back from lunch and walk by the bench to see what the trace looks like... and the unit is off. I thought. But then I notice the front panel lights are on, but the screen is blank. I powered it down, waited some seconds, then powered it back up ("power cycling"). It started normally and I continued testing.
I don't use this 'scope much, so I didn't start it again for a month. I had taken it to another bench and hit the power button. It started to go through all the usual startup screens. It got to the last one... and the screen went blank. But the panel lights stayed on. I power cycled the unit. Nothing. I tried several ways to get signs of life out of this unit, but no luck. I called Tektronix, got an RMA number, and shipped it in. A little more than a week later a Tek-nician called and said he couldn't get it to fail. It had set at a test station for a week and run with no visible problems. I told him to keep it in tests another week and give me a call if it broke or finished the week OK. He calls a week later: the unit has run fine. I told him that this was a real concern because I saw it fail twice in the period of a month, with very little use in between. He said (prepare for dropping jaws) that some power cords were known to be loose and would fail to pass power on rare occasions. But I didn't lose power, I lost the screen until power was cycled, then nothing ran. This suggested a power supply glitch or the controller was at fault or the GLCD crapped out intermittently. I wasn't real happy about taking an intermittent scope back, wait for it to fail again, then send it off to the factory and find myself without a scope for two to three weeks. He said he would talk to his head of repairs. Lo and behold, I got a call the next day at work. It was the head of repairs. She understood my problem, I was likely to find myself with an intermittent problem and sending the scope back and forth until the warranty ran out, then I was screwed to the max. So she gave an infinite warranty!! My warranty on this scope will never run out. Good old Tektronix.
So I got the scope back (with a different cord). I haven't used it that much, I no longer work for the company where there was enough need to justify it. It now sits under a bench at home, waiting for a job that needs four channels.
And that, folks, is where Tek justifies their higher costs. Try and get THAT from some Asian outfit!
In the mean time, I purchased a Hantek DSO1060. It's a nice 60MHz, two channel color-LCD scope with a 3 hour battery. It has the convenient math functions, an integrated DMM and Frequency Counter. I found it for <$600. I miss not having a seperate trigger input, but has everything I desire (except 100MHz bandwidth!) and is more than adequate for the embedded processor work I do.
And there you have it. If you really sweat the warranty, get Tektronix.
kenjj