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PosterJet RIP software for Hewlett-Packard DesignJet 5500ps and Canon imagePROGRAF W8400 printers.Do you really need a RIP when you buy a large format inkjet printer? When and why? After all, the RIP is what tells the printer how to make the letters without jaggies, how to make the photograph look close to continuous tone, and what speed to run the printer at. "No RIP needed" is traditional advertising jargon for "you can buy this machine real cheap because you don't need to pay extra for the RIP up front because this way we know you will buy our printer rather than the other printers who are honest enough to admit that you really need a RIP, that is, until you find out the printer takes forever without a RIP and can't handle text very well and that printing from Photoshop takes twice as long as printing from inDesign or QuarkXpress" Some printer ads don't really fully inform you that sooner or later you need a RIP. So when you are budgeting a printer, yes, you can print without a RIP in many cases (by printing directly from the printer drivers you receive automatically) but this is slow and featureless. If your printer comes with its own RIP, most of these are "lite." You need a full-strength RIP sooner or later.
You get a better deal with a software RIP such as PosterJet. But don't buy a RIP on price alone. Some RIPs are definitely better than others. For example, what if you have a Hewlett-Packard printer today but in a year you decide you also need to add a Canon imagePROGRAF W8400 or W6400, or another brand. If your initial RIP can't run that other printer, then you are stuck buying an entire new $3000 RIP for your next printer. That's why we like PosterJet. Our first demo of the speed of PosterJet and saw PosterJet at work during the two weeks of DRUPA trade show. It was impressive how the PosterJet can go inside the HP 1050 or 1055 and turn this CAD printer into a production machine for photo-realistic exhibit-quality images. This is because a RIP is the brains of a printer. The RIP is what tells the printer what to do. For example you need at least eight pass printing on an HP DesignJet 2xxx or 3xxx in order to accomplish photo-realistic quality. Thus you need a RIP that offers the photo mode option. Considering that a full suite of some RIPs cost about $4,000 and up to $7,000, and what is not counting any hardware, the PosterJet price is certainly reasonable, since first-time users can elect the entry-level PosterJet RIP and save some money. With other RIPs, even an upgrade can cost $2,000! PosterJet works on most Hewlett-Packard DesignJet printers, on the Encad NovaJet 700, on the new Canon imagePROGRAF W8400 and W6400 large format printers, and on several other printers. Every day people write us saying, "I have an HP 2500, 3500, HP 5000... it's so slow..." That is because of its lethargic on-board RIP. You can speed up the overall output considerably by adding a PosterJet RIP. Same with the HP 5000ps and HP 800ps. Their "ps" software is sooo ssllooowww. Its painful to wait. But all you have to do is add PosterJet, and lightening fast, you get a huge file starting to RIP in about 8 seconds. Its called RIP on the fly. It RIPs the image immediately before printing that portion. Furthermore, if you have only a tiny file, but want to enlarge it, PosterJet does a good job of pumping up the pixels to large format size. How do we know about PosterJet? Very simple, we have it installed in our office for three years with about three wide format printers. I sent an e-mail to the lab manager telling him to stop using the HP 1055cm and instead to use the newer HP 800ps. But he wrote back, saying, "No, I don't use the HP 800ps since it is too slow with its on-board ps. Instead I get prints so much faster using PosterJet on the HP 1055cm . This was several years ago. Now PosterJet works on the HP 800ps, so we can use the PosterJet on that also (the 800 has higher resolution than the older HP 1055cm). Keep in mind that all Hewlett-Packard DesignJet printers are fast. Only part that is poky is their on-board RIP. You can skip that slowness by going around it. The PosterJet will take over control of the HP DesignJet and start RIPing in seconds. We used to have to wait up to an hour for the machine to RIP a 300 MB file on its own. But no more. Fast, fast fast. Even to do a 100 MB file used to take 20 minutes with the HP before the printer even turned itself on. Now the HP DesignJet is printing before we can get up to look at it. So now you can see how we learn what RIP is good. Very simple, we use them in our own printing facility at the university. Now the new PosterJet company has an outlet in the USA, namely Scarab Graphics. Here you can get info, help, tips, and answers to your queries. For information contact is Ken Stokes, telephone (800) 350-1366 FAX(805) 684-7090, e-mail ken@scarabgraphics.com . PosterJet is recommended by Nicholas Hellmuth, FLAAR because this is the RIP preferred by thes lab technician at the university . PosterJet naturally also runs Encad and other large format inkjet printers. Does an especially nice job with the Canon BJ-W9000 Canon imagePROGRAF W8200, W6200 and other Canon printers.
Most recently updated: June 29, 2005.
Previous updates: Feb. 4, 2003, Sept. 2, 2002, Nov. 23, 2001 |
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