The question was: "This might be an unauthorized question. If so, I'm very sorry. Has anyone out there seen or worked with Turbo-Frodo? And if so, how good is it compared to O (where O has the reference level of 200%). We just had an offer to pay 3000 $ for the stuff. (25000 $ for companies). For that amount of money, it must be good (?)."

Kay Diederichs replied: "We have Turbo-Frodo and O. Currently, nobody uses Turbo-Frodo. I am not aware of any advantages it has over O - however I know many advantages of O over T-F."

Ron Meleshko added: "I have not used Turbo Frodo, so please take all comments with a grain of salt. We are happy users of O, MMS, and Alberta/Caltech Frodo. (I'm also the computer person in the lab; I am not a crystallographer.)

The cost of 3000$ is not out of line for what one will pay for commercial software from a company like MSI or Biosym. It is a tad on the high side, but the functionality in something like Turbo Frodo probably exceeds a basic component from one of these commercial companies; by the time you add modules to get a comparable range of functionality, the commercial product is probably at least as much, if not more. Also keep in mind that none of the other companies currently have any software that is suitable for fitting (to the best of my knowledge.)

(The above is not saying that Turbo Frodo is not a commerical product, but the nature of the company is somewhat different from a Biosym or MSI. I would liken it more to Waterloo Maple Software which is an outgrowth of the Maple Research group at the Univ of Waterloo.) For the amount of money involved, I would check into the nature of maintenance and upgrades for the software. I would also see if a trial evaluation period is possible; it really comes down to a question of whether or not it does something useful that is otherwise unavailable."