Chromatography Forum

Is it just me or does anyone else find it horrifically difficult to use because of a terrible user interface. Is it worth it to upgrade to the latest version of Empower?

It just takes some getting used to. You have to go all the way to Empower 3 to get any significant interface improvements, and I have some doubts that you would call them significant...

Is it just me or does anyone else find it horrifically difficult to use because of a terrible user interface. Is it worth it to upgrade to the latest version of Empower?

I find the Empower UI very powerful and easy to use (I always use pro mode)... In any case The Empower 3 UI is pretty much the same as Empower 1 (and Millenium for that matter)

It really depended on your personal preference. I found that Empower is much more organized than Chemstation.

I'm afraid that I agree with DR, Karen01 and bundy5686...I've used Waters software from ExpertEase through Empower 3, Dionex software from PeakNet 4 through Chromeleon 6.80, more flavors of ChemStation than I can easily recall, Perkin Elmer Turbo- and TotalChrom and Thermo ChromQuest 4.0 and 5.0.

But Heck, it doesn't matter a whole lot which of these I like...if you, fibonacci, find the Empower interface "horrifically difficult to use because of a terrible user interface", then Why On Earth consider purchasing Empower 3 at all?

Rest assured, the Empower 3 user interface hasn't changed all that much from the early 2000s until now.

I'm afraid that I agree with DR, Karen01 and bundy5686...I've used Waters software from ExpertEase through Empower 3,

I used ExpertEase back in the early/mid 1990's ... i liked that too!

- Karen

A client once summed it up this way: "Data systems are kind of like religions; the one you started off with always seems to be the best / most logical."

Well for what it's worth, I was "raised" on Chemstation Agilent, then was thrust into a lab where Empower Build was used. I can certainly say that initially I did NOT find Empower to be as "user-intuitive" as Chemstation was--now having been a user of it for a while I find that Empower Build is OK. Guess it's like Tom said, depends on what you were reared on and that determines your bias (to paraphrase).

If you are collecting data from a any detector [ almost ], other than a Waters PDA, you can use something which is much easier and very much cheaper than Empower called CLARITY, by DATAAPEX. You can download a demo version ahead so you can get a feel for it ahead of purchasing.

Well for what it's worth, I was "raised" on Chemstation Agilent, then was thrust into a lab where Empower Build was used. I can certainly say that initially I did NOT find Empower to be as "user-intuitive" as Chemstation was--now having been a user of it for a while I find that Empower Build is OK. Guess it's like Tom said, depends on what you were reared on and that determines your bias (to paraphrase).

At my last company we had empower 1 and Chemstation. Every analyst in the place hated chemstation but loved the empower.