Chromatography Forum

Hi,

we are thinking about getting a new GCMS and have got several offers now. The Agilent sales agent told us that it's also possible to upgrade a 5973N with a new logic board which would result in about 8 times more sensitivity and bring the device to the technical standard of a 59?? (don't remember, however a newer MS).

The thing is: we don't need a new GC cause technical developement brings us no significant advantage between our current device (6890) and the state-of-the-art one. So a better MS would be just great. At the moment we work with a very old Chemstation software on Windows NT 4.0 (looks even like it also would work on Win 3.11...) and the upgrade also would include a software update to a current version working with XP.

Does anybody have experience with that Upgrade? Is it worth the money? What are advantages/disadvantages?

Thanks for any response,

- Commander Keen

logically,

if the upgrading will satisfy your requirements with lower cost than purchasing a new instrument. go for it.

from my experiance 5975C is not differ than 5975A nor 5975B

The problem is not the "suiting my needs". The needs of a chemical engineer is always to get the best equipment as possible. I was just wondering if anyone around here already did that upgrade and can tell me what it really benefits in practice.
Of course I can believe the manufacturers ads but according to this Chemstation would also be a great software - and it isn't. Not at all...

Keen,

That sounds like the upgrade that takes an 5973 to a 5975 equivalent. The 5975 does have the extra sensitivity and the bonus of being able to acquire SIM and SCAN data at the same time (with certain compromises).

Is it worth the upgrade ? Depends on too many factors for me to say on your behalf. Generally I would go for another system but I work in a high throughput lab where capacity and redundancy are the main drivers.

Rich

We recently upgraded an old 5973 to a 5975 equivalent as per Agilent's recommendations. I can't say we ended up with an eight-fold increase in sensitivity, though. What we did get was a modern, reliable computer running on Windows XP that our IS group can maintain and which functions better with our intranet than the old one. So far, there have been no issues with reliability on the upgraded instrument.

If you don't need a brand new instrument, I'd recommend the upgrade.