Originally Posted by gsoltso

It seems to me that the puffers worked great in theory and testing, but not on the floor. They are a fantastic tool, but the maintenance was getting to a point where it was prohibitive. If you had a machine in your office that was fantastic, did everything you wanted it to, but wound up costing you 4 times the base cost in the 2-3 years after it, would it be worth it to you to keep it? Or would you do some research, remove the device and use other methods that did essentially the same tasks for about a 10th of the cost? I think the puffers were the most compelling case for the research facility at HQ. It places the equipment into a setting more along the lines of a real checkpoint to ascertain whether the equipment will hold up under the everyday stresses placed on it in the normal operating enviornment. Currently they are researching the new stuff available and doing cost/yield studies on newer tech to make certain that they don't have that happen again. I for one, am honestly happy to have the facility, so I don't wind up getting a great new tool that breaks every week! As a tax payer, that should make you fairly happy too!