By recai on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 07:01 am:

We want to analyse pesticides in foods.
We willl buy a new GC but we can't make an election between agilent and varian.
Is there anyone who has experiences these two trademarks.

thanks

recai

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By Mark on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 10:47 am:

Recai,

We have both a Varian 3600 and an Agilent 6890N GC. Of these two I much prefer the Agilent. It is much easier to use and I think more stable than the Varian. Tech support and service from both have been good, so no help there. I used to be a staunch Varian supporter but since the Varian 3700 GCs I much prefer the Agilent brand.

Regards,
Mark

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By ingochrist on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 01:16 pm:

Recai,

I agree with Mark. The Agilent GC is the industry stadard, while other GCs just try to match Agilent. Also the resale value of an Agilent is much higher of than of aa Varian GC.

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By anonymous on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 02:48 pm:

I prefer Agilent. It is highly reliable.

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By recai on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 11:13 pm:

Thanks for your contributions,
I want to ask something else:

Both firms say that GCs could make their own library, also agilent says they give a pesticide library.

I wonder that these libraries (and pesticide library) could be used forever with GC (not GC/MS), or they have to be changed whenever columns changed ?

thanks
recai

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By Mark on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 05:29 am:

Recai,
I was under the impression that all of the Agilent libraries are EI MS libraries, is this wrong? We have the latest GC-MS (5973 Inert) from Agilent, but we had to buy the MS library with it. The libraries can be used "forever" or until the computer platofrms change so much that the original software is no longer supported on the new operating system. Not sure if this answered your question or not.

Regards,
Mark

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By Ron on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 05:04 am:

I think you are talking about the RTL libraries from Agilent. These are only useful for some column phases, and the retention time lock must be reset every time the column is changed.