Apogee opinions

DCurry · October 15, 2009, 09:20:10 AM

Hey, all,

We're giving a close look to the Apogee workflow. I'm looking for general opinions on how users are liking it. I know in the past it has been referred to as "Apology", but hopefully those days are over.

My old shop ran Prinergy for the last 7 months and I loved it, so if anyone has experience with both it would be helpful.

Farabomb · October 15, 2009, 09:51:59 AM

We looked at the AGFA solution first when we decided to upgrade. AGFA is Headquartered near us and at the time we were running the Apology system at the time. What they showed us was a totally different animal. Lots of buttons, lots of bells and whistles that probably won't work in the real world. I did like the interface, it seemed more user friendly. Prinergy and AGFA's systems seem to be close to the same in functionality and it comes down to deciding can they provide what you need at the right price without a ton of crap you'll never use. That's what tuned us off to AGFA. They couldn't come close to the price we got the prinergy system for.

I wanted to go with the AGFA system because of the past support I got from them. Might be because we're right in their backyard but they seemed to bend over backwards to help us. I spent more than a few days at their tech center when the Galileo went tits up and they even found a shop close by running close to the same system and worked out a deal where we brought our stuff and used their machine to output plates. I haven't used kodak enough to access their support. Most of the issues I've had were just the newness and most were solved quite quickly. I will comment on their install thou. Seems the install techs, while great people that I had a lot of fun with, were more digital oriented. They seemed a little confused at times with the sheetfed and some of the things I needed the system to do. I really wanted the system installed, play with it for a while then have the training but that didn't happen.

Don't know if that helps you or confuses you. :wink:

DigitalCrapShoveler · October 15, 2009, 09:58:05 AM

I run Apogee and it's alright. It is a little buggy in areas, but it is quick and forgiving. It looks extremely complicated in the beginning, but actually it is pretty easy to use and figure out.

Now here's what I would do...

Every 5-7 years the lead manufacturer in Prepress equipment gets too big for their britches and ends up losing out to an up and coming go-getter. That is what's happening right now. AFAG is losing business right and left to... Kodak and Prinergy. It would seem, they are the up and comers right now. The stories I hear about what they are doing to sway AFAG customers is pretty impressive. Even to the point of buying out AFAG contracts and installing equipment free as long as one purchases their consumables exclusively. I would go Prinergy.

DCurry · October 15, 2009, 10:52:56 AM

Quote from: DigitalCrapShoveler on October 15, 2009, 09:58:05 AM...I would go Prinergy.

Yeah, me too, but Prinergy is officially off the table.

DigitalCrapShoveler · October 15, 2009, 10:53:57 AM

Why? If you don't mind me asking.

DCurry · October 15, 2009, 10:55:31 AM

Because Kodak won't support us running McAfee antivirus. This is a dealbreaker for us (we are a large company, of which the printshop is but a small cog.)

DigitalCrapShoveler · October 15, 2009, 10:59:27 AM

WOW! I remember you mentioning this. It just seems like such a trivial thing to potentially waste thousands and thousands of dollars. I am not a fan of AFAG as of late. They sold off their proofing. THey now have a third party honoring service calls and the company had no idea what it bit off when AFAG sold it to them. Sometimes we sit for a week with 1 proofer because the guy scheduled has 13 stops B4 us. That is just 1 example. I would seriously reconsider IF you have the power.

Joe · October 15, 2009, 11:29:38 AM

I agree with everything farabomb said. Price was substantially higher than Prinergy but I was impressed with the latest version. It was my first choice until we heard the price. Also, support does not come from Agfa as DCS said. Our supplier was going to do the support. Another downside as far as I'm concerned.

Their competing product to Insite was pretty impressive as well. Can't remember the name of it though. Also I don't think they have an equivalent of RBA.

That's a real bummer about the AV situation. It sucks to be stuck in the middle with both sides unwilling to compromise just a little. What can you do though???

DCurry · October 15, 2009, 12:23:19 PM

Yeah, I know. That's the price of moving from a small shop to a large corporate environment. We are technically a small printshop, but we have to live within the corporation according to their rules.

I might try to get them to at least look at Rampage, though it doesn't use official APPE. I've never used it, either, so no matter what we get there will be a learning curve.

We're looking at bare-bones setups - just need to be able to output proofs and plates without any real bells and whistles. so hopefully the price shouldn't be too bad.

frailer · October 15, 2009, 12:40:17 PM

Dan, what's the situation with Fujifilm in the US? How is it connected with Rampage? There does seem to be some overlap, but I'm not sure what. It may be worth having a look to see what pricing/availability/service level there is, depending where you are there. We're just moving to fuji's APPE (XMF), and it's pretty good on the file rendering. They claim to be the only ones who built it from scratch, as distinct from jigging the CPSI in the panel shop.
GUI is not wonderful, but we'll soon get used to it. There are many levels. We got the onboard impo, because we were well spec'd on Celebrant, the old RIP, so not too expensive. But the base APPE would work well. Especially if you could get PREPS 6. Currently it will accept PREPS 5.3.3 JDFs. You can do proper APPE late page replacement onboard with those; not to be confused with the awful EPS (OPI) workflows of the past.

(hmmm, not 100% sure whether you need to have imposition to bring in PREPS JDFs. Don't thinks, but will find out).

Joe · October 15, 2009, 12:45:11 PM

Quote from: frailer on October 15, 2009, 12:40:17 PMDan, what's the situation with Fujifilm in the US? How is it connected with Rampage? There does seem to be some overlap, but I'm not sure what. It may be worth having a look to see what pricing/availability/service level there is, depending where you are there. We're just moving to fuji's APPE (XMF), and it's pretty good on the file rendering. They claim to be the only ones who built it from scratch, as distinct from jigging the CPSI in the panel shop.
GUI is not wonderful, but we'll soon get used to it. There are many levels. We got the onboard impo, because we were well spec'd on Celebrant, the old RIP, so not too expensive. But the base APPE would work well. Especially if you could get PREPS 6. Currently it will accept PREPS 5.3.3 JDFs. You can do proper APPE late page replacement onboard with those; not to be confused with the awful EPS (OPI) workflows of the past.

(hmmm, not 100% sure whether you need to have imposition to bring in PREPS JDFs. Don't thinks, but will find out).

Linky: XMF is the revolutionary new print workflow solution from FUJIFILM

Farabomb · October 15, 2009, 12:47:22 PM

Xritron could be an option. Iirc Agfa bought the company that had the xritron tech, took what they wanted and spun that company out. We demoed the xritron system as well, the lower end option one, but the boss didn't like it and asked about the higher end system. A little after that Kodak started to really fluff us so it kinda fell out of favor. There is also the esko option but we never got farther than a demo on that one.

I used rampage at the old place. I did like the trapping and other than some files bringing it to a crawl and having to rotate all pages -90 or some shit I really didn't hate it.

DCurry · October 15, 2009, 01:17:10 PM

Fuji sells Rampage as one of their workflows, but they don't own it.

Xitron is what we are replacing - not sure if that's who you mean, Farabomb.

Probably not going to upgrade to Preps 6 til a while down the road - Preps 5 is just fine for us right now.

beermonster · October 16, 2009, 06:56:06 AM

have similar here dan

i have a xitron and am looking to move to appe - i was in a hurry so only got pricing on apogee - saw it dem'd last year - looked ok

whilst i like the look of prinergy, as well as apogee really, its handy if it can be, for us, added to for packaging - so apogee can grow into apogee packaging and prinergy into prinergy powerpack (prolly evo version)

IF i get funding (might know in about an hour or so actually) i will have to look at evo again - and compare pricing

30YearsandCounting · October 16, 2009, 08:25:02 AM

We have a full Apogee workflow (except for the WebPortal) and are very happy with it. Currently on version 5 - plan on upgrading to 6 in the next few months. Don't find it too buggy at all. Do find it very fast and ...it just works. Agfa support is excellent. I do agree with DCS on the service for the plotters. Agfa dumped the hardware support on inkjet plotters a couple of years ago and I have told them many times that we will never buy another proofing system from them unless that changes. They have no problem selling you a proofer... they just don't want to support it. That doesn't fly with me.

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Apogee opinions