On Wed, 2011-10-12 at 18:18 -0700, Paul Smith wrote:
> and have heard some good things about Bio-rad
Personally, my experience with Biorad was very positive. For instance,
we had the switch valve motor burn out and they sent us the motor for
$150 or so while they could have charged us full price of the valve
(which is couple of grand if I remember correctly). I was, of course,
blessed by having a postdoc who knew how to use a soldering iron.
I also remember that they sent us the replacement UnoQ column for free
no questions asked. In a similar situation the brand new monoQ was
having three times higher backpressure over the specs, and Pharmacia/GE
answer was "stuff happens".
As far as design goes, I haven't usede Akta for few years, but I do
remember few ruined columns when air was pushed into them once the
buffer ran out (human error, of course). Due to different pump design,
this never happens on DuoFlow. It was also true at the time that unless
you take the paper filter out, Akta would give a backpressure spike when
the pistons switch, rendering backpressure limits useless.
As a personal touch, I also find Biorad software much more intuitive.
This discussion, of course, is similar to comparing car brands -
experiences differ.
Cheers,
Ed.
--
"I'd jump in myself, if I weren't so good at whistling."
Julian, King of Lemurs
