Digital BW, The Print

Andrew Rodney wrote:

>That was our advice to them. We had 4 high level people from Epson Japan 
>at the two day meetings. One was in change of ink, the other in charge of the 
>driver. One was in charge of GB. Epson flew them from Japan to meet with us. 
>We were able to talk with them and tell them our wishes for newer inks, newer 
>capabilities of the driver. We were very firm in letting these key people from 
>Japan know that the focus made on GB was a bad one. Did that
>help? Time will tell.

IMHO Andrew has conclusively shown in his postings that the Gray Balancer is not good software. Moreover, having seen Andrew's postings on various forums for several years, the charge of his views being driven by vested interests are patent nonsense. Having read Andrew's postings on this subject, I don't have "Gray Balancer envy." On the contrary, the panel in which Andrew participated seems to have saved North American 2200 users from wasting time and materials on battling a lousy piece of software.

No, it isn't Andrew who is at fault but, rather, Epson's worldwide marketing startegy, the effect of which is to let the Gray Balancer be included in Europe (at least the UK) while it is not in North America. Presumably, Epson is letting its regional divisions decide their own marketing strategy on the theory that marketing should be tailored to the nature of individual markets. That indeed is true as many types of consumer products and their advertising needs to be tailored to the ideosyncracies of different markets. But that depends on the product: regional and national product differentiation is essntial in many fashion good or processed foods, for example. For a "almost" professional produce such as the 2200, however, this type of approach produces the current Gray Balancer fiasco, and ignores the globalization through the internet. Forums such as this one are fairly international, and North American users knew right away that the Gray Balancer was being offered in the UK.

Actually, I don't think that Epson's product momenclature under which the 1280 is the 1290, and the 2200 the 2100, outside of North America makes senswe either, as it leads to a lot of confusion among users communicating internationally on matter such as drivers, for example. If Epson wanted to make sure that users would not buy a product in one markeet than would require a power transformer, they could have caleld the products the 1280/220v and 1280/110v instead. I don't like Epson's approach to this matter: I bought an 1160 in Paris where I spent six months last year and took it to Bangkok only to find thatn the Epson warrantee is only valid in the country where the product is purchased.

--Mitch/Bangkok