Cheap PC Oscilloscopes - Any Recommendations?

Missionary Man asks: "I'm an electronics teacher looking for a good (but reasonably cheap) PC based oscilloscope for classroom demonstration purposes. I've done a reasonable amount of research and come up with a few contenders. Ideally I'd like something with a bandwidth of up to 40MHz and 2 channels. Does anyone have any tales to tell regarding the use of any of these scopes (or any others I haven't found or mentioned) and can recommend a suitable device?"

"Here's the list of my findings so far:

• The DS2200C from USB Instruments will do 2 channels at 12 bit resolution, but only to 200KHz.
• The PCS100 from Velleman at QKits runs to 12MHz, but only 1 channel. It has a bigger brother, the PCS500, that has 2 channels and 50MHz bandwidth, but is a lot more expensive.
• Picotech do cheaper ones, like the ADC-40/42, but these only operate in the KHz ranges.
• Link Instruments sell the DSO-2102S that runs to 60MHz with 2 channels, but it's a bit out of my price range.
• Finally, I found the bitscope which seems to be just what I'm looking for, combining a 2 channel scope and an 8 channel logic analyzer for a reasonable price.

I'm hoping to spend US$300-$400. I recognize the software is a fundamental part of the successful operation of these units and any comments regarding the bundled programs would be most helpful too!"

Comments

winamp?

[VegetariMan]

I think my media player has an oscilloscope...

Re:Bankruptcy Auctions!

[bigberk]

I work for a biotech that saved 75% of our initial budget by acquiring medical laboratory supplies from six other biotechs that went bankrupt in recent months

Six others? OMG, and that didn't in the least suggest to you that maybe you're in the wrong kind of business?

Re:Here's a good one

[cscx]

Don't make me tell you about the time a lab full of $70k Tek logic analyzers for a class I took had to be shut down because the douchenozzle sysadmins put the LAs on the Internet with external IPs (no firewall even), yet never thought of patching them. They all got infected with one of the worms.

Re:Cheap PC Oscilloscopes

[unitron]

...type "Cheap PC Oscilloscopes" into the search box and click "Search".

If you google for "Cheap PC Oscilloscopes" with the quote marks included all you get is a link to this article.

Re:Bankruptcy Auctions!

[The Clockwork Troll]

Six others? OMG, and that didn't in the least suggest to you that maybe you're in the wrong kind of business?

How many IT companies have gone out of business in recent years? Does that dictate that the upstart firms with financial discipline and valuable products/services should pack up shop and close their doors? Because it's an industry many have failed in?

Sorry to go off-topic but since the question was about oscilloscopes I felt I had to add a logic probe!

Re:Educational device

[I don't want to spen]

Very off-topic, but I remember seeing a demonstration 10-15 years ago of the latest Spectrum Analyser, where the salesman made a big deal of the battery backed RAM saving the settings when the device was switched off. One of the older engineers said "we've got that on the analogue spec analysers, we call it a knob."