Shimadzu HPLCs?

[Deppizzymo]

Anyone have much experience with modular Shimadzu HPLCs? Our company was working towards purchasing an HPLC unit for vitamin A & E testing but Shimadzu beat out Agilent on the quote and our company wants to go with the cheapest quote. Let me know as I would like to hear some anecdotes. Also would love to hear any other opinions on other manufacturers such as Waters (I used some very old Waters HPLCs way back in the day and thought they were pretty robust).

thanks
Alex

[elsico]

If Waters still selling Alliance in US it would be great choice, other new models very bad. The Shimadzu is not bad, near the same, only program has some strange logic from Japan)

[Consumer Products Guy]

I only worked with Agilent chromatography equipment back when I was working. Why?
1. They were reliable
2. They were the only chromatography company with local service.

I felt both were important.

[H.Thomas]

I have been working with Shimadzu HPLCs for 20 years and - I like them. They are robust and reliable. The service is very good (at least here in Germany) - no comparison to the bureaucratic Agilent service, where small labs always come last. Consumables and spare parts don't cost a fortune. If your company is price-conscious, you can't go wrong with Shimadzu.

[Jake]

I have both Agilent and Shimadzu HPLC's in our lab. I really don't have a preference one way or the other. As elsico mentions, the Shimadzu software has some odd software conventions, but I can't say I necessarily favor OpenLab either.

[H.Thomas]

What do you consider to be "odd software conventions"?

[DR]

They just do things a little differently than the other CDS systems and front panel controls do.
That said, there are control options available for most major CDS out there (though there are licensing fees and/or issues with having "Shimadzu only" acquisition PCs in enterprise systems).

[lmh]

We've had very good experience with Shimadzu Nexera systems, straightforward and reproducible, and still working a long time after we bought them.