best/worst purchases this year

[gcguy]

I have had a thought, what are the best and worst things people have purchased this year?
For me the best purchase at work was a 10mx0.1mmx0.1um BPX35 from Restek, it has cut my analysis time from 35min to 2min for certain compounds.
At home it was my Krupps espresso coffee maker, has reduced my wake up time by about the same amount.

Worst purchase of the year was small storage jars with a rubber sealing ring, I was going to use them as mini dessicators but they were useless. People think I have started a home business making jam!

GCguy

[leadazide]

Best buy at work: A decrimper tool!! I always used to open vails with a siccor or other tool with the result that i often jammed the tool into my hand or finger.. Believe it or not I accutually never thought that a decrimper tool existed..

Best buy home: Easy.. My home! Just bought a brand new appartment 1 month ago... sweet!

Worst buy work: This must be a tie between a certain brand of pipettes that just don't live up to our expectations and a system for meassuring O2 which is so sensitive that even the lighting in our lab mess up the meassuring.. and the electrodes are so frail that just looking at them wrong snaps the tip..

Worst buy home: Nothing major.. mostly clothes that seemed to fit in the store but once tried on at home never really felt that comfortable..

[GOM]

Work - not a purchase as such but setting up a lab "minibar" has to the best thing for me. I have 2 of every GC consumable and one of each column that I need or might need in it. Once a month I pay only for what I have taken out. My supplier has a mirror stock so I always have a replacement within 24 hours. It means that I don't have holdups because I had forgotten to re-order when I used that last GCMS filament or I am hunting around the back of drawers in the hope that there might still be an old pack of those special size ferrules hidden away.

Home - has to be the Topfield twin tuner PVR (whoops -I nearly wrote PVR recorder - falling into the PIN number, ATM machine, HIV virus trap) or possibly the garden shredder.

Ralph

[Bruce Hamilton]

Work - Worst = Agilent Cerity software.
Work - Best = Regis pirkle-type (Whelk) chiral column.
Home - Worst =1GB flash drive that works on all computers except the one I purchased it for.
Home - Best = Paint brush with bristles that stay together after extensive and repeated use.

Bruce Hamilton

[PJ8]

Best buy at work must be a Waters Sunfire C18 column which eliminated some horrible peak shape/ghost peak issues we were seeing on the Luna C18 whilst mimicking the selectivity almost exactly. (Our Phenomenex rep assures us the issue has been sorted out now and to my knowledge it hasn't been seen for a while on any columns.)

Worst buy, waters syring tip 5um filters. Not because they are rubbish but because I searched the lab for them, didn't find any, ordered some and then the second they arrived an old box fell out of the back of one of the cupboards. Isn't that always the way?

Best buy at home was our first car, little silver Renault Clio.
Worst buy, cordless handheld vacuum cleaner for said car which dones't generate enough suction to move a fleck of dust.