Guy's comments are very interesting but continue to point up BioRad as a
sort of headless giant, uncertain of its moves and possibly unable to
keep all of its technology entirely intact as one division moves ahead of
another.
 
Yes, BioRad has seemed to do a very good job in producing a versatile,
reasonably easy to use confocal in the 1000 model, which is very
important.  What they don't seem to recognize is that they make a
commitment to a site when they sell those folks an instrument.  It looks
very bad for them if they don't entirely seem to understand their own
software or hardware, or if they don't actively jump in and help somebody
who is struggling with a particular problem with the hardware.  Guy's
absolutely right that they should standardize their hardware, and make clear
upgrade routes if they expect the system owners to upgrade the system by
themselves.  I'd add that maybe they should make sure that their
software/hardware combinations are airtight and super-reliable, and that
they are accessible and relatively easy to mount in third party boxes, if they
intend the users to do it themselves.  Reliable is always better than
pretty and unreliable.
 
Let's face it, if somebody hadn't been screaming out there in the
darkness we wouldn't have this discussion.  Case in fact, the particular
problem that initiated all this discussion occurred not because of an
inherent difficulty with the hardware; in fact it was a problem specific
to the machine; a card edge connector, it seems, was either dirty or
damaged.  In this case, BioRad's hardware *was* ok.  Bad connectors
happen all the time.  They are not "illogical" as somebody put.  Question
is, why didn't BioRad make a few real suggestions, and send somebody over to
check it out?  Or fully engage and try to think it through?  That's the real
problem.  And maybe the person with the problem didn't ask the right
people.  But, you'd think BioRad would jump on a problem so that their
rep remains intact.
 
The End.