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Showing posts from August, 2008

Categories

Nowadays it is common to categorize goods and services, like website hosting for example, under the labels of "recognized leaders" and "low cost alternatives". In our field of NMR software, where every product does its best (and its worst too) to differentiate itself from the rest, any form of categorization is arduous. For a certain period, it was true that some products were updated irregularly, and they could be inscribed into a "low cost" category. The release of Jeol Delta as freeware seemed to break the barrier once and forever. It was a major name, it was the same program used to drive the spectrometers, and it came for free. The public, or at least most of it, ignored Delta, for a reason. It is too much different from what most of us have been used to, difficult to use and impossible to learn. The reaction of public has demonstrated that neither the brand nor the free availability are a guarantee of success. There are no recipes, there is no known...

Today's Prices

If you have no idea how much is a program for NMR, this list is for you. In one of my next articles I will explain that, in this field, there is little relation between the price and the quality. iNMR (Mac) MestreNova NMRnotebook NPNMR (Windows, Linux) NMRView (Java) Nuts (Windows, Mac) NMR analyst (Windows, Linux) LCModel (Linux) NMRPipe (Unix) Cyana (Unix + Fortran) Discovering the price of the other programs can't be easier. Just contact their sales representatives.

Sensation

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When I wrote my last post, I hadn't tried iNMR 3 on a new computer yet. While the performance on 6-years old machines is praiseworthy for all kinds of reasons, I can't believe my eyes when iNMR 3 runs on a modern machine. 2D processing is almost instantaneous, up to the point that I am asking myself: "Where is the trick?". iNMR 3 is still under development. The beta version is publicly available and is highly stable, certainly usable for all purposes. A dedicated page on the web is packed with detailed info. Don't panic, there's nothing technical, everything is extremely readable. What else can be said? It's the fastest NMR application I have ever seen, and I am convinced it will remain the no. 1 for a long time. Do you know anything faster?

My Olympic Record

I like sports, I like the olympic games, but I don't care at all about records. The competition and the gestures make the show, the records mainly remind me of Ben Johnson, doping, etc.. I like speed and the speed of computers can thrill me. It's a safe case of speed, with no doping, no danger for the health. We are rarely allowed to appreciate the real speed of our computers, because most of their potential is wasted or not exploited. When surfing the internet, I can hear the fan of my computer reaching new records of decibels. It's my CPU that is employed for a Java animation into a background window: the perfect waste! Other times, it's Acrobat Reader that activates the fan. I don't know what it's doing. I know that Acrobat Reader is an application that does a single thing, and takes 100 Mb of my hard disc for doing that single thing. I understand it wastes disc space, CPU cycles and quite likely my RAM too. The best way to appreciate the real speed of your c...