While the benefits of computers in the lab are clear, incompatibility among devices from a wide array of vendors can make it difficult to take full advantage of their capabilities. Fortunately, some leading hardware and software suppliers-- primarily the manufacturers of workstations--are moving to address the problem.
Linking computers in a lab can definitely boost productivity, but even on the best of networks there's a connectivity hurdle yet to be solved. Let's say, for example, that you've managed to connect the PCs that control two gas chromatographs (GCs) from different manufacturers. Even though you can send data from one PC to another, or to a third computer for storage or analysis, the data that come from one chromatograph are meaningless to the other. In the past, if you wanted to use data from a Hewlett-Packard Co. GC in a GC from Varian Analytical Instruments of Sunnyvale, Calif., for instance, someone ...
