Mac based densitometry

[matt hamilton]

dear bio-soft readers,
     Over the past several months I have seen discussion on this list of softwa
re densitometers that use flatbed scanners and Mac computers.  My lab is presen
tly in the market for a densitometer and I would like to know if anyone has a
Mac-scanner based system that they are using and getting good results from.  I
am aware of NCSA gelreader and hoped to use this program (or something like it)
to score fingerprint autorads and hopefully sequencing autorads.
     We have also looked at a system from PDI that uses a RISC Sparcstation and
a densitometer.  This is a nice setup but is very expensive (the price of 5 Mac
Quattras!)and can only be used for densitometry.  The Mac-scanner system would
be nicer because we could use the Mac for regular computing tasks.
     Has anyone solved this problem?  I would be gratefull for any info on this
topic.
Sincerely, Matt Hamilton, Brown University
                "Chance favors the trained mind."  Louis Pasteur