Warning: Genescan (from Perkin-Elmer/ABI)

[Tay Hou Ngee Agnes]

This is a warning to anyone contemplating the purchase of Genescan from 
perkin elmer/ABI. I bought the software nearly a month ago and am still 
waiting to see it installed on the ABI373. For reasons best known to PE, the 
floppies shipped to me were for version 1.2 instead of v 1.2.2-1 which I 
understand is the current version in use. Perhaps the folks in Foster 
City figured they could send us "old" stuff since we wouldn't know any 
better here in Singaopore. Frantic calls to the US and Australia fr the 
local rep resulted in promises of the "right" floppies being on their way 
by courier, except I'm still waiting...So we thought we'd go ahead and 
try the v1.2 to see what we could get out of it, only to get the message 
"This disk is unreadable"! The installation was  being attempted by the 
PE guy so you can't blame me for attempted sabotage either.
I don't know if it's only in Asia, but PE just doesn't seem to be 
interested in/capable of  providing the necessary support for its products. 
Apart from dud floppies, they also managed to pack the wrong manual--it 
said "Genotyper" on the cover and was all abt Auto-assembler on the 
inside! 
What I'd like to know is, is PE always so incompetent or 
am I being discriminated against because I'm here in Singapore?
I know for a fact they tried to make me pay 4x as much for my DNA 
standards. It was only when I found out the exact price people pay in US 
for the same items, that I finally got a decent price!