Here in Md I had to take a course in 1992 to get my certfied license for R12. Course anyone can buy the 134. I have been around and working on AC systems since about 1974. To me the 134 gets almost as cold as the R12 but I agree it takes longer to get that cold. I have done many conversions like Gus has done converting an R12 system to 134 because most people dont want to pay what the R12 is and they dont want to shop Ebay for it. I did not know you could get the R12 much cheaper on Ebay as thats nice. And to think of how many cans of R12 I used to have around my garage since most of the time under warranty we could get an extra can of R12 when we worked on it and I must have had 2 cases of R12 at one time but not anymore. Ron