Product category: Stand-Alone Instruments
News Release from: Tektronix | Subject: TDS5000B Series
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 10 March 2004

Novel interface lends
scope for customisation

The TDS5000B Series of digital phosphor oscilloscopes feature the industry's first customisable user interface and new context-sensitive, right mouse click menus

The TDS5000B Series of digital phosphor oscilloscopes (DPOs) feature the industry's first customisable user interface and new context-sensitive, right mouse click menus. The intuitive capabilities of the TDS5000B Series oscilloscopes simplify and make more efficient design validation measurements and tests so that engineers can get their work done quickly and easily.

Oscilloscope users are faced with increasing pressures to improve design and manufacturing processes, lower development costs and shorten time to market.

They lack the time or inclination to continually re-educate themselves on oscilloscope use as they enter the design validation phase of a project.

The new Tektronix MyScope control windows in the TDS5000B Series oscilloscopes simplify the test activities performed by electrical engineers and manufacturing technicians.

The TDS5000B Series is the most intuitive, most configurable, and easiest to use mid-range family of oscilloscopes in the market.

"There are many factors that go into the selection of an oscilloscope, but ease of use is certainly one of the most important", comments Shekar Gopalan, Vice President, Research and Consulting, for Frost and Sullivan.

"Our ongoing research of the oscilloscope markets indicates an increasing user-attributed value on ease of use and rapid customisation related to lowering the cost of testing.

During our evaluation, we found the new TDS5000B to be the most intuitive scope we've used - and the one that easily has the greatest number of features for the price.

MyScope and right-click functionality brings unmatched usability, whether performing the same task hundreds of times a day or performing general design and debug work.

The TDS5000B's combination of ergonomics, performance, and price attributes is a compelling value proposition".

"The new TDS5000B Series oscilloscopes raise the industry standard for usability", said Colin Shepard, Vice President, Oscilloscope Products, Tektronix.

"With the MyScope interface, the TDS5000B Series are the only oscilloscopes on the market that allow a user to customise control windows, resulting in shorter learning curves, easy repeatability of operations, and personalisation for multiple users.

The high-performance capabilities of the TDS5000B Series deliver sophisticated functionality to advanced users without intimidating occasional users".

New MyScope functionality enables users to quickly and easily customise the oscilloscope to meet their unique requirements.

Using a simple "drag and drop" procedure, users are able to pull all the oscilloscope features they use into a single half-screen control window, allowing them to tailor the oscilloscope to their particular style or measurement task.

Engineers can create a virtually unlimited number of custom MyScope control windows, enabling multiple users of a shared TDS5000B to each have their own custom interfaces.

MyScope control windows maximise efficiency in a user's day-to-day work by focusing their energy on the task at hand rather than navigating back and forth through multiple menus and submenus.

Relearning how to use the oscilloscope after breaks from laboratory work is eliminated through the ability to save and reuse the customised control windows.

"The Tektronix TDS5000B with its MyScope features is packed with functionality and intuitive to use", says Mike Pennise, System Test Supervisor, Varian Medical Systems.

"I expect it will provide tremendous productivity for our technicians by reducing the setup time for our sensitive measurements and virtually eliminating relearning curves.

Beyond the obvious intuitive use features, the ability for many people to use a single device, and the ability to save and share customised routines, is important to us".

The TDS5000B Series adds context-sensitive menus using the Microsoft Windows mouse right-click and scroll wheel features.

When pointing the cursor at an area of interest on the display - for example, a waveform displayed on channel one - users can right-click to bring up a menu of possible controls.

The menu then displayed on the screen is for channel one related adjustments and measurements.

Users can select and adjust these controls without 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 mouse scroll wheel toggles between coarse and fine adjustments of the parameter's value, allowing the user to quickly achieve the desired setting without their hand ever leaving the mouse.

Right-click menus keep simple things simple by providing shortcut alternatives to the menu structure that users normally would navigate.

"Tektronix has made unique and valuable innovations with the right-click and MyScope features of the TDS5000B", said David Green, Department Manager, Software and Hardware Applications, Cypress Semiconductor TTD.

"It is no small task to provide user-definable features, while simultaneously masking the complexity normally found in sophisticated instrumentation.

Tektronix has made great strides with this new product.

For intuitive operation, I define and place the controls where I want them on the screen - simple, clear and easy to remember.

This is the most forward-thinking oscilloscope I've seen".

In addition to intuitive use, the new oscilloscopes deliver a wide range of performance features from 350MHz to 1GHz bandwidth, 5Gsample/s real-time sample rate, and 16M record lengths.

Six features, including CD-RW drive and expanded PC memory, that were options for the previous generation oscilloscope, are now standard, as is the ability to capture 100,000 waveforms per second offered by the Tektronix proprietary DPX acquisition technology, and unrivalled price/performance.

The TDS5000B Series provides unmatched insight into signal behaviour by displaying, storing and analysing complex signals in real time to enable engineers and technicians to more efficiently design, debug, and test their devices.

Using the TDS5000B Series will help to shorten time to market, lower development costs, and improve manufacturing processes.

The new TDS5000B Series DPO offers customers exceptional value.

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