DPOs Employ Intuitive Learning To Raise Productivity Bar

Sporting an intuitive menu that accelerates the operator's learning curve, Tektronix's midrange TDS5000B series digital phosphor oscilloscopes (DPOs) are easy to use. Customization through MyScope and right-click menus simplify design validation measurements and tests as well as make them more efficient.

Users can get their work done more quickly and easily, lowering development costs and shortening time-to-market. These DPOs are available in a range of bandwidths, performance parameters, and prices (see the table).

"We found the new TDS5000B series to be the most intuitive oscilloscope we've used, and it easily has the greatest number of features for the price," says Shekar Gopalan, vice president of research and consulting at Frost & Sullivan.

The MyScope's drag-and-drop capability lets designers pull all of the oscilloscope features they use into a single half-screen control window. As a result, they can tailor the DPO to their particular style or measurement task. A virtually unlimited number of such windows can be created. Individual users of a shared TDS5000B can then have their own custom interfaces.

The DPOs take full advantage of Microsoft Windows' right-click and scroll-wheel mouse features. When pointing the cursor at an area of interest on the display, like a waveform displayed on channel 1, users can right-click the mouse to bring up a menu of possible controls. The displayed menu is for channel-1-related adjustments and measurements. Users can select and adjust these controls without the need to navigate the traditional menu operation.

Controls selected via a right mouse click automatically assign any associated parameters to the mouse scroll wheel for quick and easy adjustment. A press of the scroll wheel toggles between coarse and fine adjustments of the parameter's value, so users can quickly achieve the desired setting without their hand ever leaving the mouse. Right-click menus simplify things by providing shortcuts to the menu structure.

Six features—including a CD-RW drive and expanded PC memory—that were options for the previous-generation DPOs are standard on the TDS5000B family. The oscilloscopes are available now.