Digital BW, The Print

I really do not recommend anything less than Eye-one Photo or Monaco 
Pulse. You could maybe piece meal things together, but it would very 
likely cost more in the end. At some time in the future, I think a 
Monaco OptixXR pro might be the thing for me. For several reason the 
i1 does not work as well on LCD monitors as the Optix, and I think 
that is one problem I'm having with the monitor profile. The printer 
profiles from the Design are just not worth investigating. Andrew 
Rodney told me that he told GMB that the Design was too limited, and 
the profiles were junk, but they released it anyway. Why bother 
giving people Beta versions to test with if you don't listen to what 
the tester say?

Push comes to shove, I would probably pick the Pulse with the OptixXR 
bundle. If you can take advantage of it, Xrite offers educational 
discounts, the price list is posted on their site (but you have to 
dig to find it). I think the Pulse CMYK was only $1100 after edu 
discount. I did not have a good pre-sales experience with GMB's North 
Eastern sales manager, so maybe I'm biased. Every time I have 
contacted Xrite about old (out of production) equipment, they have 
ALWAYS responded quickly, and been very helpful. The only reason I 
bought the Design was to get the Spectro because it was needed for a 
different piece of software! (no updates to include the Pulse as the 
software in use is no longer a current product)

Please help spread the word about the Design package! You would 
actually be doing GMB a favor by preventing sales of this item, I can 
only image what lengths some people might go through when they bought 
a package that just does not work. The Colorvision "spectro" "stuff" 
that I also have did a way better job than the Design, and the other 
software that I use does a good job with the i1 spectro.

A side note: Jim at ecolortools.com offered to trade my Design 
towards the Pulse at no extra handling fees. He had never used the 
Design product, so he couldn't advise about it before the sale. I 
strongly recommend him for your purchase considerations!