The frustrating part for me in the conversation is that Ive done most of the stuff and tried to explain in great detail many of the things that I have done. Rather than try to disprove or confirm what Ive said, they just declare me wrong, its a simple test, go read the wiki. LOL. Here's my experience with something similar. I worked with an Agilent 1100 HPLC several years ago. After a few years of other projects we needed to get the old system going again. It had been sitting inactive so we had to get a complete servicing of the instrument. the seals and O rings were approaching a decade old, all hed to be replaced so we went ahead and upgraded to a binary pump and got a diode array detector while we were at it. In order to have a service contract we had to upgrade the sofrware since the old version was no longer supported. The new software wouldnt run on the old computer, Newer windows versions were out, so that was upgraded as well. when I tried to get new columns, they didnt have the ones I had been using and the current designs were considerably different. We ended up having to develop an entirely new method which actually wasnt a bad thing since we were able to get much better precision and we could make our mobile phase directly from a commercially available product. As always, it takes a while to work out the bugs and tinker with running conditions. The best part was we published my new method (WOOT!).
In summary, when people assure me that this stuff doesnt take as long as I say, it's pretty obvious that they haven't done it. You kinda feel like the carpenter getting told by the weekend handyman that his cost estimate is twice as much as it should be. The other thing is that Im only talking about the LC part. I dont even know what kind of bumps you'll run into with two mass specs added on. I'm actually going to find out though. We are using one of our LCs to link up to hand-me-down MS from another lab.
To be honest, I was a bit disappointed since i was familiar Osterizer from DNA discussions and I got the impression that SAIG was really receptive and open to discussions of the science of this case. There's certainly lots of clowns on MaM but the biggest difference, to me anyway, is the sheer size of MaM. Thats not a jab at any individuals. I appreciate you and thrombolytic chatting with me. Osterizer never replied to my PMs :( lol. There's a sub called HiveMindMAM or something that claims to be a discussion area for the science. I'll check it soon.
Now, reading the EDTA analysis report, it looks awfully rushed. from the bit Ive seen so far, the data isnt tight at all. I'll even show you some numbers.
WOW. I checked a series of sample repeats and put them into a spreadsheet to calculate variance and i notice my calculated values didnt match theirs. OK, i made a mistake, recheck it, looks fine. THEIRS was wrong. the first one I checked! Sorry to say this but, robust quality system my ass.
I wasnt done talking but i need to get someone to look at that data to make sure im not crazy. Sorry.