Re: Can I buy the LongTrace software?

I don't want to use the ftp longtrace service. Can I just buy the longtrace software?

The bad news is you can't just buy the LongTrace software as LongTrace is just too complex to set up and computational expensive to be suitable as a user installable software.

The good news is we have just launched a new hardware/software LongTrace system (called imaginatively LongTrace:Box). This is basically the LongTrace software set up on a small computer (an Apple Mac mini running Windows XP) which you can just plug into your network and use at you facility without having to upload your traces to our ftp server. This only limitation with LongTrace:Box is you need to be processing at least 2000 traces a month for it to be cheaper than using the ftp based system.

Daniel Tillett
Nucleics Support

We have added a separate forum just for discussion of the LongTrace:Box system. If you have any questions about the system please post them there.

Daniel Tillett
Nucleics Support

So how much does it cost?

The cost of the standalone version is quite a bit cheaper than the online version at $500 for 5000 trace processing per month (10 cents a trace), $750 for 10,000 trace processing (7.5 cents), and $1250 for 25,000 traces processing a month (5 cents).


The downside of the LongTrace:Box system it doesn't come with any performance guarantees (ie you are charged per trace processed not per traces successfully processed) so you have to be processing a minimum number of traces per month for it to be cheaper (around 2000 successfully traces per month).

Daniel Tillett
Nucleics Support

While I appreciate the business model of keeping your software a "service", please don't insult your users and potential customers by saying that the software is too
"computationally complex" when it runs on a Mac Mini.

If you don't want to sell the software, just say that it isn't part of your business model.

Best of luck.

Hi Annoyed

I hope we are not insulting our customers by explaining why we don't just sell the software. The LongTrace software is computationally complex (it takes 7 to 15 seconds to process each trace). The mac mini is a surprisingly powerful computer (about equivalent to 3Ghz Pentium 4). To run LongTrace in a reasonable time it needs to be run on a fairly powerful computer - something that the mac mini offers in a small and silent package.

The major problem we face with just selling the software is that LongTrace uses the KB basecaller. LongTrace just process the traces and they are basecalled by ABI's KB basecaller. Because of the difficulty of setting this up correctly (we need to use KB in a non-standard way) it makes for a very brittle system, where unless we know exactly the state of the system it doesn't work. Given that the extra cost that the mac mini imposes on our customers is very low (~5% of the final price), and the fact that we are then faced with supporting only one system, we think that this makes sense for our customers - I would hope they value having a reliable, working and supportable system even if it comes at a slightly higher price.

Daniel Tillett
Nucleics Support