Turn your Rigol DS1052E Oscilloscope into a 100MHz DS1102E
in [Design]
|
From: Nial Stewart on 31 Mar 2010 06:14 >>> It's also very dishonest and goes to show why humanity will never >>> make it very far. People like Larkin are too arrogant to understand >>> this. Do you think people would buy their products if they knew that >>> the only difference between the low end and high end versions is the >>> price.... >> >> ...and access to extended functionality that someone's had to be paid >> to develop? > > In this case Rigol actually went to the trouble to design-in circuitry to enable this 50MHz > "cripple" feature. The front end was clearly designed from day one to be at least 100MHz > bandwidth, and they then decided to dumb it down to meet a lower end market and price point by > adding the cripple feature. > So George is essentially right, the only effective difference is the price. OK but they had to design in the functionality to allow them to change the front end bandwidth. The only way this is dishonest is if they promised something and didn't deliver it. If you bought a 50MHz scope you got that, if you spent more you got one with 100MHz bandwidth. Someone posted earlier saying they should have just flooded the market with the 100MHz scope but that's their business decision. It's not dishonest. > The only extra functionality is being able to go to 2ns timebase instead of 5ns, everything else > is identical. A couple of lines of code? > Any extra design effort that has gone into this product all went in to designing the cripple > feature to dumb it down! Or add the flexibility to set the bandwidth. >> By your logic Microsoft should only be charging $0.50 for the costs >> of the DVD when they sell Windows7. > A completely silly analogy. Not really, the argument was that the price should be set on the hardware and that firmware that enables functionality is dishonest to charge for. Nial
From: Mike Harrison on 31 Mar 2010 07:49 On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:44:36 +0200, oopere <me(a)somewhere.net> wrote: >David L. Jones wrote: >> For those with a Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope, you can now turn it into a >> 100MHz DS1102E with just a serial cable: >> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnhXfVYWYXE >> >> Dave. >> > >You can also upgrade high end Agilent scopes buying the "feature" you >want, which turns out to be just a string of characters to be typed >somewhere. It is funny to know that you already own the required >hardware to go several GHz further! Now _that_ would be interesting to post! > >Pere I don't have a problem with charging for extra functions which involve extra software, but when you have to pay to enable hardware you already own it feels like a rip-off, like Agilent charging to allow you to use memory you already bought by selling a ' memory upgrade license'. What is even more ridiculous in Agilent's case is that the upgrade purchase involves them fedexing a certificate with the unlock code on it..
From: John Tserkezis on 31 Mar 2010 08:15 Phil Allison wrote: >> Where is the deception? > In the FACT that the 100MHz version is NOT actually a different model > but sells with a very significant price hike - like 40%. > If they told buyers THAT simple truth they would not have any sales. Oddly enough, this technique is quite frequent, though, the selling technique is more transparent, unlike Rigol who intentionally obscures the similarities. One that comes to mind are multi-processor mainframe computers that are sold fully kitted out, but only enable the number of processors the customer pays for. The idea is, you have the entire box delivered, you *know* it's the fully populated box, you call them and say you want x processors enabled, and you pay accordingly. They connect remotely, and using complex encrypted communications, your box is reconfigured: Almost instantly you have the performance you paid for. There is a risk to the vendor, who forks out for the entire box and have clients who never pay for all of it. But it's not all bad, this results in possible lock-in (depending on product) guaranteeing further income from clients that would have considered moving in the future, AND it gets YOUR brand name out there in the market, which is always good news. Likewise, where I used to work, when questioned about the quite significant price difference between our lower-speced and higher-speced acoustic products. We tell the client the control circuitry is *exactly* the same, and the difference is in the cost of the microphone, and show them the price list in case they were interested. If they wanted to upgrade (or downgrade), just swap microphones, make relevant adjustments, and re-calibrate the instrument, and that's it. The entire process was transparent. How is this different from the Rigol situation? Three points: Firstly, they have ADDED circuitry to hinder native performance, verses include, or enable circuitry (or firmware/software) to improve performance. Secondly, they've intentionally obscured this fact (exact same hardware and firmware), by making it look like two different products. And lastly, possibly worst of all, they've made it this easy to hack.
From: baron on 31 Mar 2010 08:33 David L. Jones Inscribed thus: > For those with a Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope, you can now turn it into > a 100MHz DS1102E with just a serial cable: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnhXfVYWYXE > > Dave. Priceless. ;-) -- Best Regards: Baron.
From: terryc on 31 Mar 2010 09:32
On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:30:26 +0100, Nial Stewart wrote: > By your logic Microsoft should only be charging $0.50 for the costs of > the DVD when they sell Windows7. Is it worth that much? |