I agree with John. If you are comfortable performing some computer
maintenance, then go with the cheaper solution. But if not, then go with
what Bruker recommends. Several years ago, we upgraded our Varian XL to a
Unity plus. I went with the cheaper option of purchasing the workstation
separately to save the company money. Every time the service engineer came
in to do the install, he found we were missing a cable, connector, etc. He
would leave and I would have to order the missing part. He had to make extra
trips before he could do the installation which ultimately delayed it by
about 2 months.
Ben Banks, Ph.D.
Senior Analytical Chemist
PharmaCore/TransTech Pharma
bbanks_at_pharmacore.com
-----Original Message-----
> From: John R. Berg [mailto:jrberg_at_ucdavis.edu]
> Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 11:27 PM
> To: Katherine_Wu_at_albemarle.com; ammrl_at_ammrl.org
> Subject: Re: TOPSPIN installation in new computer
The following information should be taken as suggestion only, but it is
based on a 27 year career in product development and other activities in a
major instrument company.
Both Varian and Bruker would prefer that you buy your computers from
them. The reasons for this attitude are several: they can control the
software environment; they have tested the computers and know they work;
and they get a bit of additional margin from the sale. In addition, they
can be confident that their service people know what to expect when
diagnosing problems.
Instrument companies do not have the resources to test software on multiple
platforms - their margins are high, yes (around 70% usually), but that's on
total unit sales in the thousands, at best, unlike other business and
consumer vendors that have million-unit sales. They get very conservative
about the computers they certify to run their software, since their crack
staff of three test engineers can only really put one brand of computer
through the extensive testing needed to make sure that most, if not all, of
the bugs are gone.
However, PC hardware is pretty standard by now. I routinely slap together
cheap systems that will control GC's, LC's, and other instruments, and 98%
of the time, the software works with the hardware. In the case mentioned,
I would go ahead and buy as equivalent a system as possible (which probably
would cost around $1K), load the software, and test it. It will probably
work. The only reason it wouldn't is that Bruker has programmed in some
hardware-specific low level calls to speed up data acquisition, for
example. But I doubt this is the case.
If it turns out that the cheap system won't work, you can always turn it
into an off-line processor, and go back to the Bruker solution. But I'd be
surprised if it didn't work.
Again, the caveat is that I know how to make computers work with multiple
systems and can modify the setup until things do work. If you're not
comfortable with the possibility of things not working right off the bat,
then you should pay the extra money for the guaranteed solution.
John Berg
At 01:07 PM 3/18/2005, Katherine_Wu_at_albemarle.com wrote:
>Dear AMMRL users:
>
>We are planning to setup a new workstation and upgrade another workstation
>(from NT with Xwin NMR 2.6). We like to buy new computers with XP and
>install TOPSPIN. Bruker strongly recommended to buy computers from them
>for $4500/ea, which the market sells for less than $2000. Anyone has any
>experience about do-it-yourself? Do we need some other software to go with
>this setup? Thanks.
>
>
>
>Katherine Wu
>Albemarle Co.
John R. Berg, Ph.D.
Laboratory Manager
Department of Chemistry
University of California
One Shields Avenue
Davis, California 95616
email: jrberg_at_ucdavis.edu
phone: 530-752-8795
fax: 530-758-9639
Received on Tue Mar 22 2005 - 06:44:17 MST