Chromatography Forum

Trying to request budget to procure a new GC-MS system. Clearly Agilent is the top choice. But my feeling is that Agilent becomes too complacent and their service quality is getting worse recently (I have a few new GC-FID and a couple old GC-MS, all from Agilent). My experience with both Thermo LC-MS and GC-MS are not positive, so I try to avoid this brand too.

Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance.

It all depends what you want to do with it - your putting Agilent top of the list strongly suggests that routine standard methods are your requirement.

Peter

Unfortunately, most of my GC-MS experience is built upon Agilent systems, the rest is on Thermo. So it is nature for me to look for Agilent first.

The new system is not intended for routine, standard methods. SPME, headsapce and library matching capabilities are all needed add-ons.

Thanks

It all depends what you want to do with it - your putting Agilent top of the list strongly suggests that routine standard methods are your requirement.

Peter

My experience is only HP/Agilent. Currently we have 4 GCMS systems operating, including a 6890/5972 system on Windows 95 through 6890/5975 system.

Reliability has been extremely good for both the MSDs and the GCs, would be tough for me personally to choose other.

Quality of Agilent repair? Good question, as we haven't used them in over three years. We formerly had a great Agilent service engineer in our city for maybe 15 years, but he moved to a different city. I don't even know if there is anyone locally-based here these days.

Take a look at the Bruker Scion
Agilent may dominate the market but there are competitors out there please give us a look.

Hai,

Why not try Shimadzu GCMS QP 2010 Ultra, it has a differential pumping system, high scanning speed etc.,

Now I work using Shimadzu QP 2010. I worked in the past with Agilent 7890 one with 1 and 2nd with 2 inj towers and they were not comfortable and many errors (I changed EPC, ofter MS errors, leakage from pump) . This new one is more stable and less complicated. I do not reccomend you Thermo and Varian at all.

I would agree that Agilent GC/MS systems are really good in terms of hardware (except the inferior Pfeiffer pumps), but the software was a headache. There were so many bugs in the chemstation for 7890/5975 GC/MS system.

I'd go for Shimadzu any day. As a Japanese company, they have their roots in Shintoism, so they honor their products. You get spares for much longer time than for American products.

@JI2002: In what way are you having problems with the Pfeiffer (turbomolecular?) pumps?

I would agree that Agilent GC/MS systems are really good in terms of hardware (except the inferior Pfeiffer pumps), but the software was a headache. There were so many bugs in the chemstation for 7890/5975 GC/MS system.

I agree about the great hardware ... but I would have to say that GC/MS Chemstation, while powerful, is very unintuitive and user unfriendly. It's overall design and user interface feels like it is from 20 years ago!

- Karen

HbJ,

I had problems with Pfeiffer rough pumps. In the two years after the installation of our 7890/5975 system, we had not one, but two pumps replaced due to excessive oil leaking. If you search the forum, you can find that this happened to other users too.

I have been maintaining agilent GC/MS close to 8 years now. And yes the Pfeiffer rough pumps last about 2years and you will have to rebuild them and change the mechanical seal and gasket ( cost about 75 dollars and 2 hrs time max if the oil has been changed about every 3 to 5 months)

I find the older chemstation software that controls the Hardware as in the 5972 and5973 had a lot less bugs; in others words, more stable than the new 5975inert. It has happen i had to shutdown the software and the gC/ms twice in one day on a single unit.