Dear Valerie,
I recently purchased a GV to do waters and carbonates here at Georgia 
Tech (a colleague of mine here purchased the same machine), and we have 
had nothing but trouble with GV.
I am not replying to the listserv because I still need to work with GV 
to finish the installation of the machine.
They are extremely understaffed and over-committed, and it has been a 
real nightmare trying to get our machines up and running.
To make a long story short, we purchased the machines in Feb 2004, with 
a promised delivery of July 2004.
The machines were delivered to Georgia Tech in April 2005, with an 
install estimate of 1 month.
It is September now, and netiher machine has passed specifications and 
they still cannot figure out the problem. Obviously they were shipped 
prematurely because we were threatening to pull out of the deal and go 
wtih Finnigan.
My research has suffered immensely over this, and their only response 
is:  we are doing all we can.
I want to save future folks from this nightmare. Don't choose to save a 
couple thousand dollars -  you will pay dearly down the road.
If you'd like to talk about this in the future, please feel free to 
contact me.
And by the way, please mention my name to your GV sales rep when you 
bring up these issues with him - it might help us out for them to know 
that we are spreading the word on how they failed us.
Regards,
Kim Cobb
404-894-1992

Valerie Claymore wrote:

>Hello Everyone,
>
>We are in the process of deciding which company to purchase a new water 
>isotope mass spectrometer from, GVI or Finnigan.
>We are looking at one mass spectrometer to run both isotopes.
>The two systems that we are looking at are GVI's Isoprime coupled with the 
>AquaPrep and PyrOH or the Finningan Delta+XP coupled with the GasBench II 
>and HDevice.
>I am looking to contact all labs that run both water isotopes on a single 
>mass spectrometer, and hopefully close to one of these two configurations.
>I would love to speak with you, and if possible be able to come and visit 
>your lab, to be able to get a better feel for each of these systems be for 
>we make the big purchase.
>
>The things that we would like to know, are the normal questions.
>        What is the precision and acuracy?
>        What is the throughput, both in samples per day, and time per 
>sample?
>        Do you switch systems regularly, and how long does it take?
>        What type of downtime have you had?
>        How is the ease of use, both with software and hardware?
> 
>Please let me know if you have any experience with this type of 
>configuration, and if I may come and see it.
>I am planning for a trip in late September, early October.
>
>Thank you for your time,
>Valerie Claymore
>
>
>Lab Manager
>Stable Isotope Lab
>GNS Science
>30 Gracefield Road
>Lower Hutt
>New Zealand
>+64(4)570-4645
>[log in to unmask]
>
>  
>