**RANT** Really not impressed with Kodak right now

[JCPenfold]

So after waiting 3 weeks for service to get back to me with an estimate to come out and look at my Trendsetter because I'm getting error messages about low air pressure and it keeps dropping plates, I call again and they want a blank PO before they'll send anyone out. After I get them a PO #, then the engineer finally calls and says the problem is on our end, must be the compressor, get someone in maintenance to fix it. If he has to come do it, they'll charge $250-275 "travel charge" on top of their $300/hr service rate.

And my sales rep has still never sent me the demo files for Preps 6 to try out before we upgrade. He wanted to charge me $300 for a trial license or some cr@p, and then the $300 would be applied towards the $28,000 upgrade costs. I'm not paying $300 for a demo, and you better believe I want to test it out before we pay that much money to upgrade

But Heidelberg is coming out to show me a live demo next week. God I hope it's awesome and the boss decides to switch.

You think a company coming out of bankruptcy like Kodak would work a little harder to keep their current customers happy?

[DigiCorn]

Anyone who's been around here a while know my feelings about Kodak.

Hedielberg is all good, but Signa Station sucks.

I haven't yet done a demo with Metrix, so Preps is the one Kodak product I still use. You have to have a Kodak ID, but here's the links:
http://services.kodak.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/31523/kw/31523 Overview
http://services.kodak.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/35274/kw/35274 Reference
http://services.kodak.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/40887/kw/40887 Downloads

[gnubler]

You think a company coming out of bankruptcy like Kodak would work a little harder to keep their current customers happy?

Not really. Xerox is the same.

I'm sure they all have other sources of income.

[Tracy]

Does it say pressure out of range or pressure low?
Note what it says in the message it will give you the psi i do believe

There is a sensor for a range for the psi

[David]

Kodak, Agfa, whetev, they're all the same...

[JCPenfold]

Anyone who's been around here a while know my feelings about Kodak.

Hedielberg is all good, but Signa Station sucks.

I haven't yet done a demo with Metrix, so Preps is the one Kodak product I still use. You have to have a Kodak ID, but here's the links:
http://services.kodak.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/31523/kw/31523 Overview
http://services.kodak.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/35274/kw/35274 Reference
http://services.kodak.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/40887/kw/40887 Downloads

D@mn, can you elaborate about Signa Station and why it sucks? I'm going to be stuck in Kodak H-E-L-L forever? BTW thank you for the links

[Farabomb]

Prinergy works quite well. Kodak's service is less than stellar. We pay for Kodak's service and they still haven't gotten around to changing my email addy we changed 3 years ago.

[DigiCorn]

Back when I worked with it, it was all based on .pdf, so you had to have a trapped .pdf to begin stripping. It didn't have a RIP, so you were working with vector files. We had to use their trapping software, which trapped it wrong about half the time. Once you fixed it all and began stripping, the system was counterintuitive. Forget about Work & Turns - we just stripped it as a single sided and made sure we backed up the Work & Turn correctly. The next problem is (because it was vector), it always dropped out fonts, or ignored transparencies/drop shadows. If you had a spot varnish, you had to create it in the pdf as an overprint, and then hope to God the system replicated it correctly. If you wanted a flood varnish, you had to create a new layer... but it wouldn't output a plate at the same time as the rest of the job. It was like two versions of .pdf behind where Adobe was at the time I used it. Support was non-existent; there's nothing on their website. Heidelberg kept saying it could do "this and that," referring to the issues I described above, and sent a team of people out to observe how we were using it. I showed them example after example until they finally admitted, "yeah, it can't do that... but then next version we're coming out with will..." We didn't believe them, and went with a combo of Rampage and Preps. I'm sure if you had a RIP and worked with raster files it would be better, but it's definitely not on par with Prinergy, Apogee or Rampage.

[gnubler]

Prepress is easy work. Worth the new $10/hr wage offers I'm seeing out there lately.

[Joe]

No way in HELL should an upgrade from Preps 5 to Preps 6 be $28,000. Call your regional manager and bitch up a storm.

[JCPenfold]

It's for a new server, plus upgrading Preps & Prinergy, and all the licenses, installs, training bs. Still too high, you think?

[Joe]

It's for a new server, plus upgrading Preps & Prinergy, and all the licenses, installs, training bs. Still too high, you think?

No. That's actually a bargain. The server was $18,000 3 years ago. I'm sure they haven't went down in price.

[t-pat]

It's for a new server, plus upgrading Preps & Prinergy, and all the licenses, installs, training bs. Still too high, you think?

No. That's actually a bargain. The server was $18,000 3 years ago. I'm sure they haven't went down in price.

you *can* provide your own hardware if you don't go with the crap archiving system. We run ours on a beast of a Dell PowerEdge 2900 and don't archive, we just grow the NAS and back up to tape.
This can save you a few grand. They'll bitch about it but you can do it. Well, with Evo, anyway. Not sure about Connect.

[JCPenfold]

I've basically gotten used to Prinergy, it's not too bad, but Preps 5 feels like working in PageMaker, weird example but that's what it reminds me of. And then I went on forums like PrintPlanet and people were complaining that Preps 6 is completely different, and in a bad way. So I started evaluating other options. I checked out Metrix's site, which directed me to their "preferred partners" and I ended up talking to a guy at Fuji, but they told me I wouldn't be able to import all the Preps templates which is a dealbreaker.

[Joe]

It's for a new server, plus upgrading Preps & Prinergy, and all the licenses, installs, training bs. Still too high, you think?

No. That's actually a bargain. The server was $18,000 3 years ago. I'm sure they haven't went down in price.

you *can* provide your own hardware if you don't go with the crap archiving system. We run ours on a beast of a Dell PowerEdge 2900 and don't archive, we just grow the NAS and back up to tape.
This can save you a few grand. They'll bitch about it but you can do it. Well, with Evo, anyway. Not sure about Connect.

You can do it with Connect too. They will advise against it, won't do the install or any training, and they won't support it on a service contract. The $18,000 was for the Dell 2900 three years ago so I'm sure they are still using the equivalent of that server whatever it is these days. You just get charged more when you buy it from Kodak.