Hi,
DISCLAIMER: Will i'm not affiliated with Brooks Internet Software in any
way, we also sell their products to our customers.
There's at least one way to have the cake and eat it too.
http://www.excelliprint.com/
Basically, it's an IPDS to PCL converter - it runs on Windows though.
The Software in general works well, though we had to get quite a few
kinks worked out to bring it to full production use. Their support isn't
bad though, and the software is a bit cheaper than IPDS DIMMS (AND you
can move licenses between printers - you can't do that with IPDS dimms).
The biggest problem that ExcelliPrint has is that the Lexmark/IBM DIMMS
also add a lot of fonts to the printer - ExcelliPrint doesn't do that.
Though there is hope - you can use i5/OS Software Fonts to provide the
same thing (they don't cost extra).
I've written about ExcelliPrint in my blog a few times:
http://projectdream.org/wordpress/2007/06/22/using-host-resident-fonts-t
o-print-ocr-b-with-excelliprint/
http://projectdream.org/wordpress/2007/06/26/mapping-i5os-software-fonts
-continued/
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[
mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tom Kreimer
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 5:45 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: IPDS printer option worthyness
We are changing to a single print vendor for all our locations and
will be
replacing most every printer (corporate has already made this
decision, I
don't need any recommendations for vendors!). Some of our printers
are
IPDS printers now, but most use host print transform to regular old
PCL
printers.
Is getting an IPDS option for printers still worth it? This option
usually
adds $500 or more to the cost of the printer.
With host print transform, the host system has to do extra work like
translate the data from EBCDIC to ASCII and translate the whole job
to
PCL. On older systems, this could take some time, but I have not
noticed
any print delays for a couple of iSeries generations.
What about access to printer features? Output fidelity? Any other
considerations I am overlooking?
I should note that we are not a high-volume print shop. Some of our
printers might print 300 pages a day, but that is probably tops.
midrange.com
