Ten points to ponder in picking an oscilloscope

Like microscopes for biologists, oscilloscopes serve electrical engineers as a second pair of eyes, often providing the only way to "see" what they are working on. Selecting the right one for the job is therefore worth taking some care over. While it is tempting simply to purchase the same model you've used before, you may then miss out on one or more of the many useful features and capabilities that scope manufacturers add to their products with each generation. This article is intended to speed and rationalize the selection process and to guide electrical engineers around some common pitfalls. It provides guidelines under which scopes of all manufacturers may be evaluated objectively.