You wrote: 

I'd appreciate your opinion on chamberslides vs. coated coversplis for 
neuronal cultures.
David Moses
Research fellow
Monash Uni

I have some questions

What will be your way to examine these cultures, immunofluorescence,
immunfluorescence for confocal scanning microscopy?  

Chamber slides are easier to handle in many ways than thin, fragile
coverslips, but if you have to view the final stained and coverslipped
GLASS chamber slide with confocal laser scanning microscope an inverted
microscope then you can have the problem of the little chamber separations
raising the coverslip away from the sample, changing the working distance
of the objective. We use the NUNC chamber slides that have blue
separations, rather than the removable gasket style.  

If it is standard fluorescence microscopy or light microscopy for
immunostaining - whatever, then a chamber slide is very handy and certainly
less work than necessity of coating coverslips, etc.  Since you didn't say
what kind of microscope you were using (inverted or upright), there are
very handy glass bottom dishes for this purpose, the bottom of the dish
(small petri style) is a coverslip of various diameters and thicknesses for
culture, etc and fine work for confocal using inverted scopes, nonconfocal
inverted microscopes, or using water immersion lenses on an upright
microscope.  So many ways to do things these days.  

Go to www.glassbottomdishes.com, they will send free samples, and some
dishes are specially coated and sterile for culture work.  MatTek is the
name of the company.   
Gayle Callis
MT,HT,HTL(ASCP)
Research Histopathology Supervisor
Veterinary Molecular Biology - Marsh Lab
Montana State University - Bozeman
S. 19th and Lincoln St
Bozeman MT 59717-3610

406 994-6367 (lab with voice mail)
406 994-4303 (FAX)

email: gcallis@montana.edu