CompuServe Messages

Mike, Sure. The answer to your question is yes. But it's a qualified yes for a number of reasons. My 4300P is just as good right now as it was when it was new. As a matter of fact, it's better. I've spent long hours calculating screen angles for it and I can produce beautiful color separations which result in very high quality work coming off the press. In fact, Varityper will not acknowlege that this machine can produce the quality that I'm getting from it. I would assign a figure of merit to my present color work at about 86-88 with something like Architectural Digest or World Wild Life or National Geographic clocking in at a consistent 97-100. That alone is the problem. I can't compete in the color market if I can't produce the highest quality. Because my customers can _get_ that quality as the result of a phone call and the price of a Fed Ex mailer. Add to that the fact that a 9 x 12 full page four color job takes a good four hours to image (150 line halftones, some graphics with blends and other complicated elements, type matter, etc). That's half a day just to output that one page. If there's anything at all wrong with the output (the designers fault, a typo that got missed in proofing, an inexplicable PostScript error message), at least another half day is shot. That's a full day gone, just for that single page. And, during that time, _no_ other work can come off the machine. In other words, the 4300P is not a production machine in today's printing environment, and it's quality, while very high simply can't compete in an arena where every customer wants rock bottom prices and examines the printed sheet as though his job is a Cartier jewelry ad and he has already paid me millions in previous print jobs. Now, if as you asked, can't these machines be pressed into service to replace 300 dpi laser printers, since used imagesetters are now at the same price point as laser printers were when they first came out ($4000-7500), again the answer depends on the user's ability to tolerate a number of realities. [ MORE ]