Until a more sophisticated answer hits, here's my current understanding. PDF Print Engine will "render", rather than "flatten", but honour the intended/wanted transparency effects. There being no PostScript along the route, nor any other flattening stages along the way, there will be fewer chances for anything to flatten incorrectly. i.e. everything's in sync to render flattening as intended, right at the last minute.  I suppose it's fairly safe currently if you're fully aware of how your flattener presets are set in your flow.
It'll be kinda nice when it's through it's early stages and more Print Engine RIPs are around. "Live" transparency, I've always assumed, means the file is carrying the transparency, and you haven't fiddled with it en route. Still trying to wrap my mind around it myself. I'm in a Fuji environment, not that that matters too much.

A very helpful "bug", if it is one. was in Acro7, latest update of PSP 7.

Can I sneak this underneath.

http://www.yabbadobedoo.com/toc.html

 

just a prompt for people to subscribe to this, if they're interested.

http://rwillustrator.blogspot.com

Mordy Golding's "thing". There's a good archive available.

The emails aren't all that frequent.

You were an odds-on favourite to post here first, nocampo! Meanwhile, while I'm here: spooky experience with PSP today. Had to change some type at the bottom of a poster. Without even testing, just selected Type Tool and started editing. Type started running about half letter height above line. On investigation, found that the existing type had been outlined. Yet was still able to continue editing and move it into position, delete unwanted existing etc...Type-face was, as far as I could tell, pretty much on the money. [had to pull the point size down by 1].
PSP musta still recognised the font?...I guess..[segue Twilight Zone music...] ???

Stargate, Smart Marks, broadly speaking, throw in most of the marks you used to have to do by individual category before. You can set up what you want it to throw in, and Voila! I'm not a "power" user of PREPS, but it seemed to me like a pretty big leap when we went to 5.x. The Smart Marks dialogue box pretty much walks you through your presets. Just adjust it to what you want. Big time saver, but mainly just less tedious. The colour bar feature is good, too.

Quotecs3 on the other hand, all of it, installed in about a hour tops

Yeah, was pretty harmless here too. Thanks for the input in the install etc. Rings a bell from another trailer park somewhere, but been on the road a bit lately...

Won't be getting it before Friday, anyway.

On a slightly serious note, are there any obvious pitfalls to the install? The people at our designer end will getting "help" to install it. [..the concept of "help" as applied to prepress doesn't exist..we're DIY of course}. There have been mutterings of IP addresses being required to install etc...Have got the old serial Nos. from the 6.1 boxes; we're doing a Licence+single install disk install_it's $200 cheaper. Just thought someone might have some input if they've been down this path.

Yeah, but...they still allow faux fonts, not to mention the transparency [lack of], thing. Mutter, mutter, mutter... ???

Damn, beermonster, didja have to remind me. Gotta upgrade to Q7 this week so we can stay ahead of the imminent upgrade by our IN-HOUSE people! Sob, sob, sniffle, sniffle...cretins. All they had to do was slide over to Indy CS2/3, WHICH THEY HAVE!! need I say more. Doubtless I'll be back here with some WTFs when things don't go right. At least there is a "here".