New Plotter ?

[Thom]

We are seeing a need for a better quality print for our practice. Mostly for photo backgrounds and renderings. We presently have an HP 500. Any suggestions.

thks

[Kevin]

This plotter sounds interesting: http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/creative/2007/01/z3100-intelligent-design/index.php

I have no experience with it.

[Travis]

You'll notice from my sig line that we're pretty satisfied with Epson's printers. The quality of the output is flawless, tho somewhat slower than a true plotter. The key for us has been Epson's dealer. They have a number of EpsonPro dealers around the country. . .and ours genuinely knows the real-world demands we make on the printers day in and out. That makes all the difference.

Good luck,

[Jim_Allen]

I just got a HP 800 and am really loving it. Nice resolution, prints fast and the color seems good, but I don't do photo printing.

[Guest]

Just .....

Check the new range of CANON large format printers for graphics - it is stunnning. I do not own one and still stuck with HP 500's but will look deeper into it when time come.

Ask Canon to deliver a demo inhouse, plugged to your computer with your prints..... then check it with the HP's.

[matto]

We are just about to replace our Canon Wide Format Printer (don't call it a plotter or the service department hangs up on you) that is less than 3 years old.

Maybe our machine was special but we have had nothing but trouble, almost every part has been replaced at some stage in that time.

We have a number of Canon machines, and all have minor issues, yet all business scale machines do. If you can try and speak to other local users so you can judge how good the service department is at solving problems as they crop up.

[jeffroyer]

I have just replaced my old hp with a canon ipf600. Besides some difficulty with setup (driver shipped could not run intel macs) I have been very pleased with it's output. Very fast and very clean. I hope to not have the issues the previous post listed!

[Christiaan]

This plotter sounds interesting: http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/creative/2007/01/z3100-intelligent-design/index.php

The colour calibration features in this look great.

don't call it a plotter or the service department hangs up on you

Fair enough too. Why do so many architects insist on calling printers plotters (which were those things with actual pens weren't they?)

Check the new range of CANON large format printers for graphics

Which ones are those? The imagePROGRAF?

[emkim13]

We just got our Canon ipf600. It's an amazing printer, about two thousand times better than our old HP488CA, however, I can't get all the print options to show up on our new Intel macs. I just called Canon and they are shipping out new firmware and drivers that should be Intel ready.

The printer is truly great however, the only thing I'd grouse about I guess is that the ink cartridges are about $65-70 a piece (they do hold about 3 times the ink as our old plotter but seem to go through it a bit faster), and that the printer head costs about $600 when it comes time to replace it.

The printer is not postscript nor does it comes with software ps rip. Although the folks at Vectorworks recommended we get a PS plotter when we asked them at Macworld, we decided to risk it since printing to our non-PS Canon i9900 seemed to be fine almost 100% of the time. (We don't really handle eps files.) We decided that if we do need PS, that we would print to .ps, rip it in OS X to a pdf and print that way.

Hope this info helps anyone trying to make a decision.

Edited February 9, 2007 by emkim13

[jeffroyer]

emkim13 - I had the same issue with my 600 - you can download the latest driver from the canon europe website. It is large but if you have a high speed connection it is worth the wait. I also called canon for the driver which they claimed was promptly mailed. Alas, it never did arrive! You can get some great information at this forum - http://canonipf5000.wikispaces.com/ It is specific to the 5000 but the driver is the same. Good luck