Eric Starkloff | 
March 19th, 2009| 
Two weeks ago, Martin Rowe from Test and Measurement World posted to story Will LXI Really Grow 24 Percent on his blog. I was glad to see Martin dig into the number to uncover some of the creative spin in the way it was positioned. Martin is dead-on – this number can be misleading for at least three reasons:
1) A large number of LXI instruments already had Ethernet connectivity and then added LXI compliance;
2) Many LXI instruments also have other buses that can be used to connect them to a PC, such as GPIB and USB; and
3) Not all standalong instruments are connected to a PC at all.
Not that these issues are a problem for users – it makes sense to have standards around implementation of Ethernet instruments and it makes sense to give users a choice of connectivity options. The only problem is that these numbers are positioned this way to influence public opinion; in this case, to imply that the use of LXI is greater then it actually is. I don’t blame the LXI group for trying, but I do commend Martin Rowe for questioning the report.