Re: Overlay printing (was: iSeries revenue plummets)

On 11/26/07, MichaelQuigley@xxxxxxxxxx <MichaelQuigley@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Say what? What do you consider a modern printing infrastructure? I'm not

One that works well, allows necessary customization by users, and does
not require unnecessary cost. i.E. it should be able to print nice
looking documents without too much effort.

to which other architectures don't come close. Do you want some $250K -
$1M printing system from another manufacturer? If you buy a System i and

I'm working in the SMB Market - Model 515 and 525.

use what is provided (or available) with it, you can generate *VERY*
robust printouts. Yes, IP Designer could be considered a little pricey,

Do you really want to tell our customers - which just spent 15'000 on
a System i instead of 5'000 on a PC server to spend ANOTHER 10'000
just for nice looking invoices?

So what are you using the printer driver for? To convert a MS-Word
document to an overlay? trying to do print emulation from the System i to

The first one. It's the only WYSIWIG way to get nice looking invoices
that can be done by a normal user, not a programmer.

modern printing infrastructure. (BTW, that printer driver was designed
for W2K. Does MS really support W2K anymore? I can think of a big name
vendor in the printing business who has dropped support for it. If you're
complaining something designed for a no-longer-supported OS isn't modern,

So you're telling me that the infrastructure IBM provides for the
System i is outdated? Then why are we arguing? :)

If you're printing a low volume, spending a couple thousand dollars on an
Infoprint laser with an AFP/IPDS card will do the trick. For high volume

You know, that is exactly the problem. Of course a printer with an
IPDS ROM or an ExcelliPrint front works much better than a plain PCL
printer. It adds additonal cost (750CHF for XCP, 1500CHF for the ROM).

But that means additional cost, a lot, for not really much of a gain.
Windows based applications have nice looking printout on a 100CHF
printer.

But 100CHF printers are crap. But a modern, PCL5/PCL6 capable in the
network should work together with the System i - without integration
problems, additional trouble, etc. pp. An IPDS ROM fixes that, but it
adds unnecessary cost, and the printout looks still bad.

printing, the printer will cost you more. And if that's the case,
spending a few thousand dollars for the software to set it up and drive it
shouldn't be that big a concern.

Yeah, maybe in your big company which has 10 595 for 10 millions each
positioned around the globe, while spending 100k a week for toilet
paper. But our customer ERP projects average around 100k investment.

infrastructure as using MS-Word, there are ways to be very effective with
that. (Although, I wouldn't personally go that way.) Try "i5/OS and
Microsoft Office Integration Handbook" or I believe SystemiNetwork has
some courses available on it.

We already have a quite capable Office integration in our software,
but this doesn't solve the whole printing problem.