[time-nuts] HP Reliability

Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk
Sun Feb 14 06:28:20 EST 2016


   On 14 Feb 2016 09:04, "Perry Sandeen via time-nuts" <time-nuts at febo.com>
wrote:
>
> Hi,
> It is rather depressing to me to hear RK and others remark about the
unreliability of HP test equipment.
> There is one area where they had outstanding equipment.

I have a friend with a fairly large lab. He must have 50 signal generators,
15 spectrum analyzers, plus plenty of other stuff. Mainly RF. Most is
HP/Agilent, but he has Rohde & Scwarz and Anritsu too. He finds the HP the
most reliable.

Also Anritsu seem to charge a lot for calibration.  A recent repair to a
modern 6 GHz Anritsu signal generator resulted in the repair bill plus
£1200 GBP (around $1800) for calibration. That particular sig gen, which
was sold for mobile phone use, has an electronic attenuator that will blow
up if a mobile phone is transmitted into it.

He used to think he preferred R&S signal generators to Agilent,  but the
reliability of the R&S has been poorer so his mind has been changed on
that.

I am sure every company has some products that have been very reliable and
some less so, but I would dispute that HP is in general less reliable than
other decent makes.

Support on HP is generally good, with the forums which are answered by
Keysight staff. (An annoying exception seems to be LCR meters and Impedance
analyzers developed in Japan. The Japanese engineers hardly ever visit the
forums so questions on LCR meters and impedance analyzers generally get no
response.)

There are instrument ranges where other manufacturers seem better (e.g.
Keithley for electrometers), but overall HP/Agilent seem the best choice to
me.

I know someone who is looking for a 20.GHz VNA. He just lost out on a
Windows based R&S VNA that sold on eBay for a bit over $7000. There's no
way a 20 GHz Windows based Agilent VNA would fetch so little.  This is
reflected in their higher resale values.

At least with the older stuff,, service manuals for HP are useful,  though
modern service manuals are less so.

Just my opinion.

Dave.


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