This month's "Column Watch" is the first of a two-part series in which Ron Majors examines the trends in column introductions at Pittcon 2002. In Part 1, he describes high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) columns and packings for reversed-, normal- and bonded-phase; ion-exchange; ion; size-exclusion; and large- and preparative-scale chromatography. He also looks at speciality HPLC columns.