[SNPsaurus]

I think it is reasonable for Illumina to have the upgrade path... it is just unfortunate that many facilities are possibly facing a difficult situation. It is also unfortunate that many machines were recently upgraded to the 2500 and it wasn't clear at that time that the 2500 upgrade was substantially different from a factory-built 2500.

[kmcarr]

Or when a car model in 2013 had some gizmo and you find out that it simply was not compatible with the older design? Betcha you don't expect auto makers to list what in the new model is not backward compatible with the old model.

But it is obvious to the owner of a 2010 Toyota Carolla that the 2013 is a different car. The problem is Illumina never made clear that they were making substantial changes to instruments being sold as "HiSeq 2000", leaving the impression that all HiSeq 2000s sold are substantially identical. I imagine they could have avoided much of this blow back had they simply renamed the instrument at the time improved the camera system (e.g. HiSeq 2000 Model II).

[bilyl]

So how many of you bought video players or Rokus in 2012 and tried to hook them up to 3+ year old TV without HDMI ports? Betcha you did not think you were screwed by the TV maker and we're "entitled" to trade in the TV for a "rreasonable cost". Or when a car model in 2013 had some gizmo and you find out that it simply was not compatible with the older design? Betcha you don't expect auto makers to list what in the new model is not backward compatible with the old model.

Frankly the tone of this discussion is more than a bit odd. True, commrrcia equipment is held to a higher standard but expecting the upgrade of a 3 year old major component is not exactly reasonable.

That's ridiculous. For one thing, most of us are academics and we don't work in the free market. A HiSeq costs 750k and is a huge capital expense, especially with today's limited NIH/govt funding. If we were talking about consumer goods then you would have a point.

Secondly, by having the new kits be unusable on the older machines, Illumina is purposely starving themselves of revenue. It is the reagent kits that make most of the money -- there aren't that many HiSeqs around the world.

Lastly, users are disappointed in this thread because all upgraded machines are thought to be "HiSeq 2500"s except for some speed issues. Sequencing centers paid money to get their 2000s upgraded (many of them happened this year!!), and there was no guidance from the company on how these won't be able to use new kits. If these centers had known, many of them would have passed on the upgrade and saved up for a brand new machine.

[ymc]

Wow. 1Tbp in 6 days! That's 3x the throughput of 600Gbp in 11 days!

If we assume the machine can lasts 2 yrs and costs $750K, then the per day equipment amortization cost will drop from $1,027 to $342!