Best GC/MS system

[lipidanalyzer]

I have to purchase a GC/MS system for lipid and pesticides analysis. I Know the Agilent products (6850/7890 joined to 5975C MSD detector) but I can't found much information about another products as Shimadzu GC/MS. Do you have any experience with no-agilent GC/MS systems?? Are Shimadzu products significantly better or cheaper??

[Rick]

Hello!

Agilent is the reference on GC analysis
It is simply, good support, high sensitivity, easy to work, a big oven door, Ion source is easy to dismount, low maintenance needed..ect. ...and some company sale Agilent consumables or equivalent.....

I use Agilent MSD for pesticide multiresiudes analysis (300 pesticides in two injections) since year 1998 and I have no problem....a low LOD, repeatability et reproductibiltity with low maintenance needed....i clean my ion source only one by year.....and my next msd instrument will be Agilent!

[mcbort]

Hi Gerlad!

We have some Shimadzu system since many years in our lab and we are very happy. Be advised to consider also cost of autosampler in overall system: Shimadzu has on catalogue HT200H & HT250D that are very cheap but they offer also very great perfomance!

[july]

Hi,

I am new to Shimadzu GC/MS and have had to learn to use the system alone, so I am not sure my opinion is valid.

On the phone with tech support with Shimadzu I have heard..."oh..that's just crappy software" so many times it makes me want to growl in frustration.

I always used a HP GC/MS in college, but only for qualitative analysis - never quantitative like I am doing now. I remember I liked the HP though.

Once you get over a couple of weird software issues Shimadzu is easy to use. There's also a newer version available since we've purchased ours...so surely they've fixed those problems.

I can't say enough about the tech support at Shimadzu, though. I really have couldn't have asked for better customer service. I called with IGNORANT questions that I coudln't figure out with just the manual alone. They were very patient with me. They were never in a rush to get off the phone. Seriously, some have talked to me for over an hour to help me fix my problems and never once complained or growled

Anyway. I have no idea about others, but Shimadzu isn't bad. I like it now. I'm starting to feel like a pro heh

[sassman]

We have a Shimadzu 2010 GC/MS and it has been very good for us. The software is a bit hard to learn, but after you get past the learning curve is very nice. As mentioned the tech support is very good. I haven't used Agilent GC/MS systems, but I can tell you that I like our Shimadzu better than the Thermo-Finnigan GC/MS that we have.

[slentz]

I used to use a Varian Saturn 2000 GC/MS. I was happy with the the instrument, software and customer service. I think it's worth checking out.