Re: [Leica] Leica's unresponsiveness

[thibault collin <tc-lnc@u-picardie.fr>]

>Good luck. So far as I can tell, Leica will NOT become responsive to its
>user population. I base this not on interactions with their camera
>division, but with their microscopy division. In particular, we have had
>many, many problems with support of a $200,000 system for biological 
>fluorescence miicroscopy. The system has always been optically perfect
>(that is, worked AT the theoretical limit of optical resolution)
>but its UI (it's computer-controlled) stinks, and is not upgradeable:
>we are stuck with slow, expensive (and increasingly, unreliable and 
>unrepairable) 1992 technology. Furthermore, in conversations with 
>3rd party vendors of high-end microscopy equipment, Leica is repeatedly
>characterzed as a singularly uncooperative source vendor, in sharp 
>contrast (pun intended) to Zeiss, Nikon, and Olympus. And these vendors
>are increasingly offering microscopes with optics that are the equal of 
>Leica's (Zeiss, of course, always has).
>

Hi Alexey,

Be careful with Zeiss, I've had (and still have) the same problem as you
with a Zeiss microspectrofluorimetry system that is optically OK but is run
by a "jurassic park -type" computer system! This system as well as the
microscope (axiovert 10) are not anymore upgradable...I think the japanese
companies offer much more interesting systems by now and of course, they are
cheaper, especially Olympus. A friend of mine just bough a "million bucks"
infrared-UV-fluo Zeiss system with water immersion lenses and is bothered as
hell to have it in working order. Zeiss technicians are not efficient, at
least in France. I've use a leica confocal system which was a pin in the ass
to operate but at least was upgradable with UNIX-talking computer. Finally,
the Leica-camera company is now totally independent from the leica
microscopy and scientific instruments company. The latter is making money,
the former doesn't...
Thib.