Thursday, November 02, 2006

Incomparable

When I find a new product, whatever it is (car, hi-fi, laptop, wine, after-shave, you name it...), even when I don't know what it is, I automatically look for the price tag. Initially the reason was: "If I can't afford it, why bother?". Now I have a different attitude, I often bother and seldom buy, but the first thing I do is still to look for the price-tag. It's so immediate, you know. Most of the NMR processing programs have their price published on the internet. I have created the following list that redirects you to each price page. You'll find all forms of licensing schemes, and programs of all sizes and all qualities, ranging from the unusable to the great. The purposes of the products are also quite varied. You find the general-purpose tool, the protein-specific, the synthetic-chemistry-oriented, the spectroscopist-oriented, the easy-to-use, the etc... Eventually I have repeated the error of all list-makers: I have added products that I know nothing about.
My long-term mission is just the opposite: to write a detailed review of each product. (Still have to find the time, a copy of Windows, etc...). Today, however, my only aim is to fill a void. Many students have no idea of the price of NMR software. Here are the sites that report the prices:

I have included the available freeware, because the price is implicitly stated. I have excluded some products that are NMR programs but not NMR processing programs. I have excluded some freeware that requires a commercial package like Matlab or Mathematica.
Some important names are missing, because their companies don't disclose the price on the web. Ask their quotations, it doesn't hurt. Every company has its policy. Only in the case where there's an active development of new versions, and when writing software is the main activity, they calculate the price from the cost of producing-marketing-distributing the product and, as it happens, from the lifestyle they hope for. In some cases they don't write any new software and are just trying to capitalize their past efforts (their only cost being the web space).

1 Comments:

At 6:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Some of your links arre broken.

ACD chem sketch (freeware) has a NMR processing program with the drawing package. Doesn't work with Jeol files though.

 

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