RIP software compatibility for Canon iPF8000 and iPF 9000?

[priusjames]

Hello-

The more I learn, the less I seem to know about this...

I've been lurking around for a while and learning what I can...now I have questions specific to our printers. We have a Canon ipf8000 and an ipf9000.

Looking at these RIP software titles:

Wasatch Softrip (Canon version, 4 printers...this feels like the one to get)
Caldera Visual Rip (I think this is for one printer)
Onyx Poster Shop Rip Center (and an extra printer license)

We had Onyx Poster Shop 10.x with 4 licenses and other add-ons, the dongle was stolen when somebody broke into the shop before we moved to the new location. All they really took was a bucket full of USB/thumb drives that have been left behind by customers for years...and they decided to take the drives from the USB ports on the workstations too. That included the Onyx dongle. They probably have no idea what they took, and I'm assuming the drive is full of photos or music by now.

I was surprised when Onyx basically told us to suck it, so they've lost their position as our "go to" product. To be fair, a rep called me after I sent a scathing email responding to SPAM I've started receiving from them [sic]ever since they blew me off, and he offered a small discount...appreciated, but the smallest version is still more expensive than competitive products list price.

I'm at a UC Campus, we've been out of money for everything except faculty hiring and faculty pay raises for a few years (you may have read about our fiscal woes)..so I can't cough up the funds to replace the software, will have to downgrade. The thief took our ability to RIP, and several schools on campus are suffering from the loss. It's time to move on, but I'm so confused! The more I learn, the less I seem to know.

Now that Onyx has shown what they're made of, we're looking at other products (and will tell faculty/students/staff who ask us for software recommendations about our experience) and will buy the entry-level product that's a best fit without regard to what we've done in the past.

Nobody seems to offer "Academic Pricing"...a discount that is paid back in spades when all the students and faculty, who will soon be out buying products on their own for their startups and/or research work, choose the product they know has been working well for us in the Academic Environment.

Caldera allowed a demo download, great. I happen to use a Mac at my workstation, so the demo loaded fine and I was messing with it..then I realized it's only for Mac and Unix. Darn, we have Windows 7 machines in the Copy Center.

A rep for Wasatch claims they've had SoftRip returned because it was incompatible with these specific printers, although the Canon version plainly lists them as supported (right?). Wasatch themsolves told me they are completely compatible. Anybody have any experiences, good or bad, in relation to these printers and RIP software?

I guess I should say that we basically run academic research posters and teaching materials...pretty much 2x3, 3x4 and AO sizing...usually from PDF (or Word sometimes when people are lazy or don't follow direction). Sometimes we do banners on vinyl, and poly signs for outdoors, and we do gloss signage for BookStore displays/sales/POP.

I think I covered it all, but feel free to remind me what I forgot!

Thanks

James

p.s. alternatively, perhaps somebody has one of these products not being used and would like to sell it to us...or make a fine tax-deductible donation to a State University? A guy can dream...

 

[priusjames]

Is this in the wrong "category"? I wasn't sure which to use, and this is the only one that I noticed specifically mentioned wide format printers. If I posted to the wrong section, feel free to let me know!

Thanks

James

 

[iladi]

I have the full version wasatch and using it to run 4 different printers in a copy shop similar to yours. One of my printers is a ipf 815 model. And it works ok. Please wait till tomorow morning to get to the office and see if ipf 8000 and ipf 9000 are in the selectable configurations. I cannot remember for shure, canon has a very long list of selectable printers.

As far as wasatch rip, i' m prety satisfied. As i told you i have 4 printers: roland sp540v, mutoh draftstation pro, epson 9700 and canon 815. Rip is on a quad core, 8 gig memory workstation with windows7 and i have no problem printing all printers at a time. Rip time is fast and this is helping when i have 15+ students in line each one with a few A0 to print. One small problem is that wasatch is not having adobe print engine and is possible that some PDFs to print incorectly, especialy the ones generated by some particular arhitect software. I don,t know if it is wasatch or that software to blame, tha fact is i prefer to convert PDF files to TIFF file before printing, just to be shure all is ok. But this is maybe solved in the last version of softrip, i have only softrip 6,8 version.

 

[iladi]

ok, in my wasatch softrip 6.8 full edition both ipf 8000 and 9000 are present. so i guess they are also present in the canon edition.

 

[priusjames]

ok, in my wasatch softrip 6.8 full edition both ipf 8000 and 9000 are present. so i guess they are also present in the canon edition.

Thanks for the message(s) with real-world info, and for checking the compatibility list...I appreciate it. Your comment about a line of students waiting for AO posters is a familiar one, for sure. The only thing worse is a line of 200 who want "Class readers/notes" before they have to go to their next class in 10 minutes (wait...we're bringing in revenue, so it's actually better...right?). The fact I'm not allowed to make a profit or lose money...we are required to run a zero-sum shop, following State Guidelines...means for every dollar I spend I need to bring in a dollar (but only one!).

With your input, I'm reassured that the software will drive my printers (Ryan at Wasatch just let me know there's a 60 day return policy, and that he believes the return I mentioned was due to a workflow issue, rather than a printer compatibility issue...it's only fair that I mention that).

I hadn't realized that Wasatch didn't have the PDF Engine that the others have, so I also wanted to thank you for something pretty obvious that I'd have missed. Does this really matter? Not sure, would have liked to have tried though.

Sheesh, there's just no way to compare them, "apples-to-apples" style. Calera only runs on Mac and Linux (making me about the only person in the building who could use it) but has the PDF engine. Onyx does what we need and has the PDF Engine, but I'm not very happy giving them more of our money, knowing they won't support us if we have a problem with the new dongle. Wasatch has a lower cost version with only Canon (which all of my current printers are), but most of the files people supply are PDF and I have to do conversion work on some, but don't like to because I can't charge for my time.

More leg-work is in order...

Thanks again

James

 

[iladi]

if you have the posibility to try softrip, give it a try. not ALL pdfs are trouble makers. mostly arhicad ones, and some with weird fonts (in my language we have some special letters and some fonts are home made or have bad maping letters), and some autocad generated. bad layer/transparency (but this can be a problem even with pdf engine) and heavy using of special CAD fills this are the one that make problems.

in this case, my work is: combine multiple pdfs from one user in one multi page pdf. then save as tiff or eps, import into RIP and print.

now wasatch is version 7.+ it is possible that their pdf handle is better than the 6.8 version.

 

[Katch26]

Hmm this sounds like a good alternative to onyx for my 8300, I'll have to check for compatibility.

 

[priusjames]

if you have the posibility to try softrip, give it a try. not ALL pdfs are trouble makers. mostly arhicad ones, and some with weird fonts (in my language we have some special letters and some fonts are home made or have bad maping letters), and some autocad generated. bad layer/transparency (but this can be a problem even with pdf engine) and heavy using of special CAD fills this are the one that make problems.

in this case, my work is: combine multiple pdfs from one user in one multi page pdf. then save as tiff or eps, import into RIP and print.

now wasatch is version 7.+ it is possible that their pdf handle is better than the 6.8 version.

Thanks for the encouragement. I went ahead and placed the order for Wasatch.

I won't be surprised at all if somebody were to come forward (now that I've placed the order) and say "look at the strange USB Key that we found...", nothing surprises me around here anymore.

Thanks again

James