Which oscilloscope - Agilent or Tek?

[Steve_N]

New project is funded.  Includes generating pulses and measuring rise time of DUT.  Have $18K budget for oscilloscope & waveform generator.  Must use bench-type instruments, Tek or Agilent (not negotiable.).  Measurements for this project not at all stretching state-of-the-art, but want to buy equipment that would be good for future projects (i.e.: 4-channel >= 500 MHz o-scope.)  Software for this project will be LabView - and I'll be learning it during this project.  The question is... for current model 'scopes, which brand, Tek or Agilent, has the most tried & true LabView drivers?  We've mostly used Agilent 'scopes & like their triggering but in this case I need instruments that are going to be quick to get up and running with LabView with the least problems & shortest learning curve.

[crossrulz]

If I were you, I would just download the drivers and choose which one will do what you need.  Use the Find Instrument Drivers from the LabVIEW welcome window.

Personally, I'm a fan of the Tek scopes and ended up writing my own set of drivers.  It was fairly simple.  There's just a lot of configurations and settings.

[johnsold]

I have not worked with the drivers for either brand of scopes recently so I canont comment on that.  Like crossrulz I often end up looking at the drivers for ideas and writing my own.

About 3-4 years ago I bought a scope in that range from Tek. And returned it. Then got Agilent. The scope had horrible noise problems due to the internal switching power supplies or screen/display drivers.  Tek finally admitted they knew about the issue but had no fix.  I had always preferred the Tek scopes but learned to like the Agilent.

Lynn