Re: Facscan upgrade?

Hi Barbara 

We have the 5 color upgrade on one of our Scans and are impressed with
its robustness and sensitivity. The are a couple of issues associated
with it that can be resolved if you are aware of them. As the system
uses the width and area parameters of the DDM the short parameter names
in the header are wrong and the data is displayed as linear when it is
really log. The software used to control the FL4 and FL5 PMT voltages
and compensation settings is called Rainbow, the latest version can
automatically correct this when you save the files. It is still a little
buggy which hopefully will be fully resolved in the next version. The
newest version of Rainbow also allows you to save the FL4 and FL5 
voltages and comp settings. Flowjo (v6) also allows you to change the
header information. It works fine if you know what you are doing so
requires a few minutes of instruction. The uninformed user however can
screw up their experiments, but isn't this the case with everything else
as well.
All the best down there Barbara, pity us, the ice is drawing ever
closer!

Best	 Simon
>>> "Shacklett, Barbara" <blshacklett@ucdavis.edu> 10/14/04 3:35 PM >>>
Hello, 

We have a Facscan that we'd like to upgrade to 5 colors (from 3).  Cytek
in Fremont, CA, offers an upgrade consisting of a 637 nm laser, 2 PMTs
and an FL4/FL5 board all for about $25k. Sounds good so far.  We already
have an LSR-II on order for multicolor work, but we still need a
functional workhorse for 3-5 color experiments.  Has anybody out there
used the Cytek upgrade, and are you happy with it?  Any feedback
appreciated. 


Thanks, 

Barbara Shacklett


--------------------------------------------------------

Barbara L. Shacklett, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Dept. of Medical Microbiology and Immunology

School of Medicine

University of California 

3327 Tupper Hall, 1 Shields Avenue

Davis, CA 95616  USA

Tel.:  +1 (530) 752-6785

Fax:  +1 (530) 752-8692

blshacklett@ucdavis.edu