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On Wed, 3 Jun 2015 11:47:54 +0000, Cammer, Michael 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
...  And anyone want to chime in about the current state of what appears 
to be a very sad story of Olympus, once a top shelf Japanese company with 
wonderful employees, open policies regarding technical specs, positive 
response to customers, great equipment, that we have relied on for years, 
but...  
Regards,
Michael
> 

Regarding Olympus, the open policies regarding technical specs must be a 
distant past. Few years ago I had to spend $1.99 in Harbor Freight Tools 
for a digital multimeter to find out what is the pin out on our IX81 shutter 
connector. Olympus would not tell me, it was apparently an engineering 
secret.  
On the other hand, our local reps and the field service has always been 
great in our area.


I have seen the VTeye demo maybe 8 or 9 years ago, so for sure things 
like more sensitive detectors, faster computers and other improvements 
will have an effect. Overall I was impressed by the speed  but not the 
sensitivity of detection. At that time I thought the instrument was more 
suited for people studying flow and particle motion rather than a live 
biological system. 

Regarding the Thorlabs confocal system that George McNamara mentioned 
in the previous post, I would be interested to hear if anybody on this list 
had a  chance to use it. I like the circular pinholes, but am curious how 
much signal is lost by having the detectors coupled via the optical fiber.    
________________________________________
Stan Vitha
Microscopy and Imaging Center
Texas A&M University
College STation, TX