Solid 5500xl

[colindaven]

Hi everyone,

has anyone upgraded to the 5500xl yet ? If so, are you impressed ? What about the new software (Life/Livescope) ?

If not, do you know if they are producing again at the Hitachi plant in Japan and how long delays might be ?

[epistatic]

Our SOLiD 5500 was ordered Fall 2010, was anticipated March, now I hear sometime July - October. It was delayed, then tsunami, etc. We already decided not to buy a second 5500 and bought another HiSeq, it was delivered two days after PO went through (end of quarter special).

[mbblack]

Hi everyone,

has anyone upgraded to the 5500xl yet ? If so, are you impressed ? What about the new software (Life/Livescope) ?

If not, do you know if they are producing again at the Hitachi plant in Japan and how long delays might be ?

We got our current SOLiD system last year with the upgrade bundled into the purchase. Our 5500 system is slated to ship sometime this summer, but that was the last word I heard from our ABI reps, so seems delayed at least a few months from what they were saying in January.

ABI has a webinar next week on an intro to LifeScope - check on their training page if you have access. I should get it soon (we have a Penguin Scyld cluster for BioScope now and will put LifeScope on that).

May 24 - P.S. According to the order I placed yesterday for our upgrade to LifeScope Core Server software, it will ship on June 19th.

[VanessaS]

Our first 5500xl is due in the lab on June 13th. Has anyone completed any runs yet? Especially paired end?

[asaleh]

I am also anxious to hear about this. We do not have a date on our install as of yet.

[irongraft]

Hi, our 5500 XL has been delivered the last week. They are assembling it together with our new cluster. I'll let you know very soon

[VanessaS]

We are in the middle of our first two runs. Deposition is a breeze, tho we are having a harder time hitting the beads per panel we want. Getting the flowchip on is easy as pie, and its basically push the button and walk away once its on. Software is taking some getting used to... more updates later!

[HiroMishima]

Our 5500 SOLiD and the LifeScope cluster were delivered this week and will be set up next week.

While I am waiting for machines, I am reading manuals of the cluster based on Scyld SclusterWare that are available at the web page of Penguin Computing.

[mbblack]

I received our copy of LifeScope last week, but have not had time to install it yet (it will go on our Penguin BioScope Cluster). LifeScope has a wholly new GUI and includes new tools for graphical presentation of data, so it will be interesting to see. I've never actually used the GUI for BioScope, just the CLI.

[volks]

any news on the 5500?

[VanessaS]

Two runs are done, the quality of the reads looks really good. From what I can tell. Its kind of hard to tell, other than the floaty dot and the green bars were together and up high. Who thought THAT was a good metric display thingie...... But the satay plots look really good.
I miss being able to see best plus good beads. Its going to take a LOT of getting used to the new interface. I know its supposed to be intuitive but my intuition is on vacation.

[pmiguel]

How about speed of the runs? The 5500 is supposed to be about 2x faster than the SOLiD4. Do you find that to be the case?

--
Phillip

[mnandita]

We got no hard copies of manuals for anything along with our 5500xl- just a usb drive with soft copies and spent half a day taking printouts. Is the case with everyone else?

[RPiddock]

Yes, we only got soft copies too.

[pmiguel]

Ours came on a USB key, but included an old Apple iPad (first version) to view the protocols. The protocols were out of date, so I downloaded new ones from the Applied Biosystems web site.

To tell you the truth, I did not really want another set of giant manuals that are outdated in 6 months. The iPad is a step in the right direction. But there are factors that are not ideal. First, to get the .pdfs on the iPad, you pretty much have to use iTunes. (Unless you are 1337 enough that jail breaking your iPad holds no terror for you.) The iTunes wants a credit card number even if you don't want to buy material. In the US, at least, there is a work-around that avoids this issue. Second, things are still clunky for finding the right manual and navigating until you get used to using the iPad. Third, one worries about dropping the iPad and breaking it.

Possibly cheaper alternatives (eg, Kindle) are worth considering. Brave new world...

--
Phillip