Chromatography Forum

we can get the shimadzu 8030 and agilent 6460 about the same - euro 250,000 - after weeks of bargaining

Hello -

I am late to the party, but have recently joined the chromatography forum and figured I'd give my two cents. I have experience with Waters, Thermo, ABSciex and Shimadzu LC-MS/MS systems. I can tell you that they are all pretty much good machines, however each comes with it's own software package. Our Waters and Thermo instruments seem to have the most down time (always breaking) and our Sciex and Shimadzu systems are always operational. The problem I have with the two finalists (in my opinion, the top two are Sciex and Shimadzu) is that the software for the Sciex instruments (Analyst) is ALWAYS having problems. No matter how many new versions of the software Sciex introduces, there are still the same problems as the previous versions. They never get fixed. Shimadzu has a completely different software platform where all acquisition, quantitation, etc. features are contained within a single method. This was quite an adjustment to make since my head was so wrapped around MassLynx, Analyst, Xcalibur, etc., but it has since become second nature to me. SEND IN YOUR SAMPLES! Sales people play with numbers to determine scan speeds, S/N, etc., so these are always hard to judge by. There are lots of Shimadzu haters here, but in my experience they are very good instruments. It just depends on what you need each MS system for.

A note to Mr. Yves: The Nobel Price was awarded to the Shimadzu employee for inventing MALDI, not ESI.

Therefore, it has no merit for LC/MS.

Regarding Shimadzu I love their very long support cycles that shame the competition (Yes, Agilent, this means YOU!) though I don't have experience with them besides some older UV detectors and UV/VIS spectrometers that work just fine.

My recent contacts with their salespeople were less pleasant: They tried to convince me that a sampling rate of 300 HZ was a prerequisite for Fast GC. After that, I never called back and chose another vendor.