Goodbye Shimadzu.... Hello Agilent!
Shimadzu's BAD reputation forced change at ESA!
For many years, ESA Inc. (Chelmsford, MA) private labelled Shimadzu dual-piston HPLC pumps (Model 582) and sold them exclusively for use with the CoulArray coulometric detectors. Now, that marriage is "on the rocks." Enter Agilent HPLC pumps (Series 1100) which are now being sold by ESA for optimized electrochemical (EC) detection.
One has to wonder "OUT LOUD".... What Happened???
Well placed Sales and Marketing personnel report that Shimadzu's BAD reputation (which is only getting worse by the day) has negatively impacted ESA's ability to grow it's LC and EC businesses. These same Sales and Marketing personnel note that ESA has received numerous professional communications (eg, voicemail, email, snailmail) chastising them for doing business with the Shimadzu Japs. And Shimadzu equipment reliability problems didn't help either!
In an effort to stem the carnage, ESA apparently decided to search the marketplace and now offers another competitor's product which don't have the baggage that Shimadzu does.
n.b. For evidence of Shimadzu's baggage, one only needs to review the many candid observations that have been posted in the various usenet groups which can be accessed via the http://groups.google.com domain (search for "Shimadzu").
You demand performance and value. Remember, Shimadzu FAILS miserably!
This page was last 
03/31/02