"Best" Oscilloscope Recommendations...

[Gareth Jones]

Ok - SWMBO (She who must be obeyed) asked me what i wanted for my birthday and I said an Oscilloscope.

Ddin't get shot down...

So - i have one shot to spend the money on it.  I see two ways I could go:

1)  PC based - something like the

VELLEMAN PCSGU250 USB-PC SCOPE + GENERATOR (2CH.)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006DXCO3E

or

2) Standalone - Something like

RIGOL Digital Oscilloscope 50MHz DS1052E

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/NEW-RIGOL-Digital-Oscilloscope-50MHz-DS1052E-1-GSa-s-1Mpts-3-years-warranty-/300846840560?pt=BI_Oscilloscopes&hash=item460bde7af0

Now - I have lots of spare pc's - but - think the standalone might be slightly more useful.  However - the PC one seems to have more functions - including a signal generator etc. so I'm torn.

Any Thoughts would be appreciated.

[sigpoggy]

I can't speak to the digital scope but I have used both the PC scope and an analog 50 mhz scope on this project (audio freqs). The only advantage I found to the analog scope was a finer and wider amplitude adjustment, much easier and more flexible triggering, and over all easier tweaking things with physical knobs and buttons. The waveform analysis on the pc scope was useful. I was not thrilled with the pc scope UI, but eventually I figured out how to do most things I wanted albeit often it was slow and clumsy. The pc scope takes up less space and is cheaper.

[Gareth Jones]

Ok - anybody got any other opinions?

I'm leaning towards the digital scope - Apparently they used to be upgradeable to 100 mhz scopes - but that has been made a little more difficult. 

Anyone do this with success?