P2 Solo: ONT Extends Support But Not Sales

A brief update to the earlier P2 Solo piece - Oxford Nanopore has now announced they will extend their support for the device until 2030, but they are still ending sales this summer.  So a cosmetic victory for Solo fans, but not really much gain - and certainly disappointing for anyone saving their quid for a future purchase.  Solos may become very valuable, though it's hard to see ONT ever countenancing a healthy resale market.

One aspect of the community's frustration I hadn't fully internalized: ONT likes to lock down their integrated devices.  So MinION and P2 Solo have special love from the tinkerers and envelope pushers of the platform, since they are unfettered in terms of what software they load and use during runs to experiment with new adaptive sequencing approaches or other imaginative bounds-pushing.  

Oh, and apparently the big P24 and P48 models can't keep up basecalling with more than about 20 flowcells running.   The P48 always seemed like an odd duck, with few labs ever having call for that many flowcells running at once.  An odd duck that misbehaves is far worse.