Valerie,
I use my Cadenza for many studies. It is most valuable in screening
monoclonal antibodies, when I only receive 80-100ul of supernatant. I don't
believe there is a machine out there that does 80ul consistently other than
the Cadenza or the manual Sequenza. I must admit I hand load the primary
but I let the machine do everything else. I totally agree with Billie:
>In summation, you should weigh what is most important to your institution,
turn-around time, flexibility, ease of use, or cost per slide.  Then find
the best match with the instruments available on the market.  I wouldn't
make any decision without weighing my options against everything that is on
the market.<
I would like to add that you should demo all of your prospects, it not only
lets you know how the machine will work for your particular lab it also
gives you some idea of how the company will "treat" you after the sale.
While some institutes need large production models I feel if you are doing
non-clinical and more academic research your lab would benefit greatly with
this system. We have 8 permanent programs set up on our Cadenza. It takes
some experience to get quick at the programming setup but without the
pressure of time constraints (pathologist etc) it is relatively easy set up
and I have trained our Post-Docs how to set it up.  Number of slides per
run is not a problem for us since we discovered we could purchase two and a
half Cadenzas for the price of one of the other machines. Also it was very
important to our institution not to have to have any kind of "required"
product contracts since we use mouse tissue and in house primaries the
universal secondary antibodies are not applicable. We also save a lot on
cost of antibodies we purchase. Some of the monoclonals that we use to use
neat have been titred on the Cadenza at 1:1000.
The coverplates are rather expensive for one run. They are right around $1
each so we reuse them. Although Shandon does not recommend "reuse", we have
had no problems with cross contamination. We do take very good care of them
and track number of times used. The only problem we have had is a couple of
air bubbles trapped once in a while. We also have to put a wet paper towel
in ours for humidity (but we are in AZ and I believe OH humidity is
probably higher.)
Again I would like to stress what Billie said is the way to go. For our
purposes the Cadenza does just what we need. Hope this info helps. By the
way are you a research facility? anita