Help..urgent.. Lc/ms/ms which is better?

[lmh]

Don't ask for prices here. Ask the company reps, in private. It's sad, but you will get radically different quotes according to who you are, and how much cash the company thinks you might have in your pocket. Somewhere, presumably, they have an absolute minimum price below which they will not go, but all sorts of strange things can happen between that and the list price. There are sometimes ex-demo models, for example.

[Karen01]

There are sometimes ex-demo models, for example.

List price is a joke. NOBODY pays it. When buying system (LC + Detector) expect to pay at LEAST 20-25% off of list for a new instrument. For a demo expect to pay 40-50% less.

- Karen

[hermo71]

The price I gave are not list price, but 'street price' usually applied in my country (Italy)

[lmh]

Even street prices will vary hugely according to who you are, how much cash the company thinks you have, and whether they consider you to have any long-term value as a customer. And the street price one year may be radically different to the street price a year later. It's always worth finding out what your street price is. After all, the cost of finding out is one e-mail...

[hermo71]

lmh, I'm a sales manager, so you don't need to teach me these things. By the way, 130k euros is the average price they apply in CRO, goverment labs, University, and so on..Price can be 10k euros less on more depending on the actual euro-dollar conversion

[ChemSam]

For those who weren't aware, hermo71 was removed from this forum. He is a sales rep for Thermo and has not been advertising it like required.

Please make sure you use this in your judgement on which LC system to purchase.

[lmh]

But please don't be biased against Thermo because of one salesman who misbehaved. I'll be up-front: I have Agilent, Thermo and Waters equipment in my lab, and don't represent any company. Personally I think all companies have their good and bad points, and they change over time. All you can hope to do is buy the instrument that seems to suit you now. There are some very good reps and some reps who are hard to trust; it's important to separate the company, the instrument, and the rep.

[Karen01]

But please don't be biased against Thermo because of one salesman who misbehaved. I'll be up-front: I have Agilent, Thermo and Waters equipment in my lab, and don't represent any company. Personally I think all companies have their good and bad points, and they change over time. All you can hope to do is buy the instrument that seems to suit you now. There are some very good reps and some reps who are hard to trust; it's important to separate the company, the instrument, and the rep.

But all that is hard to do if you need to do both small molecule and protein work, particularly if no one in your organization has any LC/MS or LC/MS/MS experience, and it will all be an under the gun learning experience.

I made my decision based on not just specs on resolution, but perceived flexibility, ease of use of hardware and software, and software features that help newbies figure things out ... all from what I could find on-line and from talking to their sales people.

Given the amount of money involved, I hope I made the right decision! Time will tell.

- Karen

[lmh]

Sounds like you considered all the right factors! Good luck, and don't look back; frankly all the major manufacturers have pretty good products, and I'd rather have a 2nd-rate instrument in the hands of someone who likes it and has taken the trouble to learn how to get the best out of it, than a 1st-rate instrument in the hands of someone who's just not up to it. Even if you've been really unlucky and mistakenly hit a 2nd-best, that shouldn't stop you getting some top-notch work done.

[Alexandre]

Hi Jervin,
Acquity are very reliable, at least in food residue labs, you are unlucky with yours. I have experience with 2 systems in one lab in a country with Mediterranean climate and now with 5 systems in another lab in a country in tropics. This is unmatched product as far as I can see for my area of chemistry. There are some tricks there, if you still interested give me more info.
Shimadzu UPLC also very durable, we used iodine to pump for afla post-column for years. Iodine is very corrosive. System never failed. Software from Shimadzu, I would recommend, is Class VP, it is similar to MassLynx and Excalibur, all very good products, easy to learn, switch between and use simultaneously by staff of all levels.
Alexandre.