454 was the first NGS platform that appeared in the market.
Advantages:
Its main advantage was the length of the reads
Disadvantages:
As this was the first technology introduced in the market for NGS, in Era7 Bionformatics we have a lot of experience analyzing data from 454 machines:
454 platforms :
See also: http://454.com/products/gs-flx-system/index.asp
A personal Sequencer.
See also: http://454.com/products/gs-junior-system/index.asp