Thread: Unix Popularity
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Old 6th July 2008
DrJ DrJ is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Gold Country, CA
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The program you cite does one of the many functions of Chromeleon. There are a few things to keep in mind for these sorts of tools: a typical biotech or pharma company has hundreds of these instruments. Heck, even my very small company has an HPLC (it runs under NT of all things). They are also the analytical backbone of the chemical, petroleum, polymer, consumer products, food and environmental testing companies. They are even used in wine making and quality control. There are likely more of these instruments installed than the sum of all the BSDs world-wide. I'd wager that 98%+ are controlled by Windows applications. The only ones that are not are those that are old enough that they have no separate control computer, and use on-board devices where the OS is not clear.

For those in biotech or pharma, the data that is stored (which the program you mention cannot do) has to be certified to comply with FDA standards. Otherwise, the data are not sufficiently tracable, and you the company loses your billion dollar investment into your drug because the FDA will not accept your data.

Yes, this is a niche, but it is a huge one.
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