Shopping for real-time PCR thermal cyclers - iCycleriQ real-time system? (Mar/24/2005 )

Has anyone had any experience with the iCycleriQ real-time system? I have had experience with both the ABI 7000 and Stratagene MX3000p. Both seemed to do the job, although I did not heavily use them. I am now in a different position where I am looking at bacterial gene expression from culture. Right now we are not interested in looking at the quantitative expression of particular genes, we just want a fast way to detect the presence/absence of the genes to determine the bacterial subtype. The reason I am interested in the iCycler machine is it's apparent versatility, e.g the ability to remove the real-time system and interchange the blocks, the ability to use a dual block for standard PCR in one machine. I am currently working for a very small company that is constrained for money and space. The fewer machines I have to cram into my lab the better.

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with the iCycleriQ. Advantages, disadvantages etc.

Since my last post we have discovered the Cepheid Smart Cycler II. I think it is awesome that you can control each of your reaction tubes seperately each with it's own thermocycling parameters. For our uses this would be ideal. The ability to link multiple blocks together down the road would aso be pretty cool.

If anyone has any comments or experience with any of the machines mentioned, I would like to hear about it.