Digital BW, The Print

> The company, ColorByte Software in Tampa, Florida, is not one I would
> put in the "user friendly" category....
>
> Their support is among the weakest in the industry. Read their web
> site support policy, which when combined with their software
> protection sends a message that they think their customers are all
> thieves who will eat up all their profits with annoying support
> calls. In 5 phone calls I made to buy and install, they never
> answered the phone. Instead, they returned my calls with 1 to 2
> hours, which may be good because they don't have a toll-free number.

This has not been my experience. I was vary about buying IP because I 
live most of the time in Bangkok where my Epson 7600 printer is and 
telephoning the company was not an option. However, I took the plunge 
and used e-mail to contact the company. I found that my e-mail messages 
were all answered satisfactorily the same day or the next day. And I 
had plenty of problems because I bought the Mac version program last 
October which ran kludgily under Mac OS9 owing to the lack of 
multitasking of that system and then switched to the 0SX version in 
early December and, as ColorByte admitted, the initial OSX version had 
several bugs -- and the company extended the warranty period until they 
were finally able to provide a solid release, a period of some 7 
months, if I remember correctly.

Moreover, when I was in the  midst of my problems of not being able to 
print John Pannozzo and Daniel Barrett telephoned me in Bangkok -- it 
was New Years Eve their time! -- to make sure that the problem was 
resolved, as it was difficult to figure out over the phone what was 
going wrong.

Indeed, the reality about their customer support is the opposite of 
what you write: ColorByte has consistently listened to its customers, 
the latest example being the introduction being the Monitor Black Point 
Compensation slider in v5.6 which allows you finely to control the 
degree of shadow detail and color saturation.

BTW, I thinks that if they call back in 1-2 hours, that's not at all 
bad for a small company. It's a lot bettter than being put on hold for 
15-20 minutes as is common for many companies.


>  That Microsoft message "strongly" recommends that you
> abort the installation and contact the manufacturer because
> continuing "may do severe harm to your system.".... Yet there
> is no mention of it in any of the ImagePrint documentation, nor on
> their web site support pages.

The manual is not very good and should be rewritten and expanded in its 
coverage.


> ImagePrint uses 225 megabytes of disk storage because it installs
> every component for every known printer. The typical user probably
> needs about a third of the stuff that gets installed.

My installation is 86MB. I think that the bulk comes from all the paper 
profiles that are installed. I deleted all the profiles that I don't 
use.


> In operation, the software is fast and efficient. But the user
> interface is about grade "C". Not as confusing as the infamous
> Photoshop vs. Epson print controls, but close. You have to look in
> three or more different places to make the common settings required
> for each print job.

Although the user is not elegant, the program is very easy to use once 
you have set it up correctly. In v5.5 they introduced automatic ink 
selection when the paper profile is selected so that the correct Matte 
Black or Photo Balck ink set is selected for color or grayscale prints. 
This simplifies things a lot.


> "Conclusion: I'm glad I bought ImagePrint. I'll keep it.

That says it all. Yes, I wish the price were lower but that is the 
company's decision, and you're free not to buy. And I don't like the 
dongle either but it hasn't caused any problems, despite that the 
dongle software under Mac OSX will not let you print if Classic is 
running, but that is a very minor inconvenience.

--Mitch/Potomac, MD