I just received literature on the new Waters AMDS-Automated Method Development System. It is essentially their Alliance system with a PDA and a column heater/column switching module. With the integrated DryLab software, it allows you to develop and optimize methods, unattended. Anyone have one of these? Any comments to share? Ballpark price?

Thanks,

What are you especially interested in? I have had a look on a sytem that was still in beta-status.
Hardware IS Alliance, instead of the column heater a column thermostat is (or should be soon) available. A six position column switching valve is integrated and a six position solvent selection valve is available.
The software consists of Empower, Drylab plus and a AMDS wizard. The wizard integrates Empower and Drylab. For pure method development the wizard is the only software the user works with.
The user has to enter some basic information on the analytes (acidic, basic neutral, no. of compounds..), on the system (columns, column positions, solvents ...)and on desired method characteristics (gradient or isocratic, importance of time, reolution...). Based on column properties (dimension, backpressure etc. nothing chemometric) four to six scouting runs are proposed. Once accepted by the user, methods and sequence are generated automatically and started. Results are transferred to drylab and calculated. Based on the calculation verification runs are performed. If the acceptance criteria are not met, the system switches to the next solvent or column. In the end a report is prepared.
Peak assignment is based on UV spectra, drylab files as well as empower methods are saved, just in case you want to have a look into them. Column parameters are provided only for some Waters columns. The system I saw did work in that way and produced some interesting and unexpected results.