If you're doing simple digital work, you can get a hell of a lot of functionality for a lot less.
I'm a huge fan of the Saleae Logic (http://www.saleae.com/logic). It does 8 lines of digital scoping @ 24 Mhz PLUS protocol decoding (I2C/SPI/CAN/Serial) for under $150. That's 5% of the cost of a Tek or Agilent scope. And the GUI is lightyears better than those other companies.
Looks very nice, and seems made by people smart enough to make the software multi-platform (Linux/Mac/Windows) and ship to (most of) Europe without customs hassles.
Haven't fiddled with hardware lately, but I'm tempted to get one for old times sake (today came across the logic probe I made with a LED, resistor, plastic pen and sewing needle back in my student days ;-).
In addition to the existing 8 25MHz channels on the Logic, it adds two channels that can go up to a 100MHz and 4 channels up to 50MHz. At $300, it remains quite a steal.
I just used one of the Saleae instruments for the first time the other week (I'd had my eye on them for quite a while before that) and it's great. Personally I sometimes want to look at analog signals, or signals that are a bit faster than what the Saleae can handle, so for me it is more of a complement to a scope (which I do already own) but for people with slightly different needs I can easily see how it could handle most everything they might otherwise use a scope for.
