I supervise a microbiology lab for the province of New Brunswick (Canada). We
analyse waters, mainly for coliforms and total bacteria. The latter are
determined by the pour plate method. We are requested to perform thousands
of plate counts annually. The counting of colonies can be a laborious process.
With this in mind I requested information on a software program called COLONY.
A Mac version has been available for about a year, with a Windows version
available soon.
If anyone reading this has any "hands on" experience with this software, I
would appreciate hearing your impressions of the ease of use, reliability,
usefulness, etc., of the software. I would also appreciate hearing folks'
views on the purpose behind the acquisition of such software (automation of
enumeration). I am questioning my wisdom of increasing productivity by putting
the responsibility of determining counts in the "hands" of a computer. Should
automation be used ONLY as a means of speeding up the parts of an analysis
which do not require a decision? Or can functions like the determination of a
plate count be entrusted to a machine?
Please feel free to contact me via this newsgroup or via my e-mail address
(brianh at gov.nb.ca). Thank you for any technical help and advice you can
provide.
Brian Hoyle
