My lab is thinking of leasing an LC/MS/MS, but working for the Health Service means money is tight, so we want a system that does the job we want, and is reliable. The work is analysis of basic drugs in biological samples, mostly plasma, which we do by hplc at present. Does anyone have any practical tips or advice they could share regarding different systems / manufacturers in everyday use ? Also, I've heard that with MS/MS there is minimal sample clean up required, even for biological samples.....how true is this in the real world ? We're due to see Micromass soon, previous forum messages seem quite positive for them.
Thanks for your help.

Sample preparation is also very important for LC-MS/MS but may be less important than with HPLC. The issue here is ionization suppression associated with interference coeluting with the analytes (can be from previous injections).