I am a university instructor and am looking for a chromatography data station for use with HPLC. We already have some Hewlett Packard Chemstations which we use with GC but I do not find it particularly easy to teach the operation of them to students.
We have HPLCs with analog output needing data handling. We do not require too many features-peak height/area, different options to calculate peak area eg tangent skim, perpendicular drops, calculation of column efficiency, USP tailing factor... We are considering more HP Chemstations, Perkin Elmer Turbochrom, Waters.The HPLC is not made by any of these manufacturers though. Any suggestions?

I use the varian star software.
I find it to be quite easy to learn, and it has many of the features you mentioned. However, the one method I run that generates "negative" peaks necessitated the purchase of an Analog to digital converter board and the reversal of leads to "invert" the negative peak. Other than that, I found it to be a very good package.

Hope this helps.
brad

Hello

Have a look at:

PC/Chrom from H&A Scientific

http://www.hascientific.com/pc-chrom.htm

This is a very cost effective package that could suit your needs.

Stay away from Waters software-its the tail
wagging the dog-a programmers jollies and a
chromatographers nighmare. Totally inapprpriate
for beginning studen

Wow, I can't not respond to the previous message. First of all, I agree that Millennium is not the best choice for beginning students. They do not need the power and flexability built into that software package. As for a chromatographers nightmare, I take great exception to that statement, perhaps the previous author would like to migrate back to chart recorders and counting squares on chart paper? The development of ALL vendors software is USER driven, does that writer really think that programmers just add features for FUN. The bottom line, for chromatographers who take thier job seriously Millennium is anything but a nightmare, it solves problems and provides features that are simply not available in many packages.

Hmmm...$12,000 software package for a university lab? Flexibility ought to mean: the ability to pay for only the features you want to use. I suppose there is precedence for software sellers to try to get every feature into one platform.
To the university instructor I would suggest a simple, generic data acquisition package. In my opinion, university students should learn to calculate peak height/area etc from raw data. After seeing the effects of noise, coeluting peaks etc they might even appreciate the power of a software package.

alltough this discusion was not about millennium, i could not stop myself from replying. for every feature in software there is at least one user asking for this feature. You do not need to use every feature off the soft ware but you can make your own choise. only one off the chromatographer has to know every feature and decid wether it is usefull in his lab.
I agree millennium is not a good choise for students who have to focus on the chromatography instead of the datasystem, but in a lab the situation is different. Extra features are then at least harmless and sometimes very ussfull.

I would suggest you take a look on the old Gilson 712 system controller software. It doesn't has many features you don't need, it's cheap, reliable and (in my opinion) realy easy to learn.

Well, I support Andrej's point of view.
I would also recommend proven old stuff from times when programmers had to put exactly only the basics into the soft.
I do not know the Gilson 712 system but I am using a very old Axxiom Chromatography DOS series 717 chromatography manager on one of our HPLC's.
I suppose this might be the right stuff for teaching, but I am afraid it is no longer available now ( may be second hand for a bargain price ).

This wonderful package contains all the essentials of chromatography data handling ( I mean sequence, method, integration, graphics ) in a very understandable form and runs under DOS on anything between good old XT ( by the way there is definitely no Y2K bug problem on XT under IBM DOS 3.3x ) and latest Pentium.

P.S.If I compare this one with ( brand X )todays Windows based systems I can't beat the feeling that not much has been added except for complexity and system requirements.
P.P.S. When it comes to chromatogram processing speed, Axxiom 717 on 10 MHz Turbo XT keeps pace with ( brand X ) 32 bit chromatography manager running under W NT4.0 on 350 MHz PII w. 64 MB RAM.

I agree that the best bet for teaching is an obsolete data system. I use a 13 year old Shimadzu CR4A. It does a lot, but requires the operator to make menu choices many times per chrom review. We also have a milenium system, but it is so complicated that no one likes to use it. If you were to need at least half its features, and use it every day, it would be more ideal. Students need something much more generic. The old, pre-XT CR4A is faster than the milenium on a modern computer; its complexity got ahead of the hardware, I guess.

hi
i work in france and i suggest you to learn the CHOMQUEST software by thermo quest.
this one answer to yours questions.
see you

Hello

So what did you get in the end?

As the person who first posted this message, I found it difficult to make a decision on the evidence given. Someone else posted a similar request and asked people to vote on systems that were actually named. I got the impression that each system has its set of supporters and that no clear winner emerges. Of course, the best thing to do is to write a list of desired features and check whether the prospective system meets these requirements. But it is difficult-as someone pointed out, most systems have many more features than the average user would require!

We haven't bought a system yet-funding arrives slowly in the University Sector so any more sensible comments would be appreciated!

Data systems are a lot like religions: the one you were born into / learned first usually seems to make the most sense.

Might you consider buying some new or used stand alone intergators?An integrator would show the students what is being done with the analog data,
without involving them in learning the ins and outs of a specific data package.