National Instruments and Agilent Technologies to Increase LabVIEW Support for Agilent Instruments; Test and Measurement Leaders Collaborate to Expedite Availability of Instrument Drivers.

AUSTIN, Texas & PALO ALTO, Calif. -- National Instruments (NASDAQ:NATI) and Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) today announced a cooperative effort to create National Instruments LabVIEW Plug-and-Play instrument drivers for Agilent LXI, USB and GPIB instruments. The two test and measurement companies are working together to provide instrument drivers to engineers and scientists shortly after the release of new Agilent measurement products, making it even easier to combine the popular graphical development platform NI LabVIEW with the power and breadth of Agilent instruments.

"The control and use of test instruments can be a daunting task in today's fast-to-market environment, and multi-company test platforms are a very real challenge," said Scott Sampl, vice president and general manager of Agilent's Systems Products Division. "Through our combined efforts with National Instruments, we can significantly speed up the availability of high-quality LabVIEW drivers for our new instruments to ensure test developers achieve fast and seamless integration in their test systems."

Today, more than 750 Agilent instruments are supported by National Instruments, and the drivers for those instruments are free and available for download from the NI Instrument Driver Network at www.ni.com/idnet. With this new initiative, Agilent plans to provide National Instruments with early access to its new products so NI can develop native LabVIEW Plug-and-Play instrument drivers. This cooperative effort facilitates the timely delivery of drivers whose functionality reflects the instruments' full capabilities.

"Working with Agilent to create LabVIEW instrument drivers guarantees that engineers and scientists can easily create tightly integrated measurement and automation systems," said Eric Starkloff, director of test product marketing for NI. "This effort is part of our ongoing commitment to provide an open platform for automating and controlling instruments over any communication bus, including GPIB, LAN-based LXI, PCI Express, PXI, Serial or USB."

About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) is the world's premier measurement company and a technology leader in communications, electronics, life sciences and chemical analysis. The company's 20,000 employees serve customers in more than 110 countries. Agilent had net revenue of $5.1 billion in fiscal 2005. Information about Agilent is available on the Web at www.agilent.com.

About National Instruments

For 30 years, National Instruments (www.ni.com) has been a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation -- a revolutionary concept that has changed the way engineers and scientists in industry, government and academia approach measurement and automation. Leveraging PCs and commercial technologies, virtual instrumentation increases productivity and lowers costs for test, control and design applications through easy-to-integrate software, such as NI LabVIEW, and modular measurement and control hardware for PXI, PCI, PCI Express, USB and Ethernet. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 4,000 employees and direct operations in nearly 40 countries. For the past seven years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America. Readers can obtain investment information from the company's investor relations department by calling 512-683-5090, e-mailing [e-mail] or visiting www.ni.com/nati.

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