How faster RIPs and recorders
can cure bouts of insomnia

LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- You say you haven't been getting enough sleep lately? You're up all night pacing, watching TV, then dragging around work the next day?

Do you long for a good night's rest? Well, let's review the state of output systems at NEXPO '94 -- maybe that'll help.

Oh, the output people did try to drum up a little enthusiasm, but the really slow RIPs and imagers are gone, thank goodness, so output speed is no longer a show-stopper.

What's left to trumpet? Not much.

In the raster image processor category, it was the old game of "My RIP is faster than your RIP," with the stakes going ever higher thanks to faster machines flogging the recalcitrant PostScript code to new heights.

At the top of that heap, according to the ever-objective Monotype salesman, is the Adobe CPSI software RIP running on the new Sun 2061 SPARCstation. There's a good likelihood of accuracy here, though -- Suns are always white-hot and CPSI is a speed demon on any platform.

For price-performance ratio, it's going to be hard to beat that same Adobe RIP on a PowerPC platform, unofficially seen at many NEXPO booths but not yet a product because Adobe has not blessed it with certification.

Figure this into your plans: PowerPC is expected to have a new I/O system next year, replacing SCSI. It'll get cheaper and faster because that's how things are. Adobe will have certified it. And there will be enough units out there for a real-world test.

Assuming all that leads to this: Of the other platforms on which soft RIPs run, '486 machines will be serviceable but nothing to write home about. SPARCstations, unless they do multiple things as well as they RIP, will be expensive overkill. That leaves in the also-ran category Pentium (much cheaper because of competitive pressures) and Digital's Alpha (speedy -- 190 MHz at the high end -- but unique).

So wait a year if you can, and watch the fun.

Looking for an affordable full-page proofer? Lots of shops are, and it's nearly there in a $20,000 thermal printer from companies such as Monotype Systems Inc. of Rolling Meadows, Ill., Birmy Graphics Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., and others. About one more price cut and even newspapers will be able to afford them.

A few booths, chief among them Autologic of Thousand Oaks, Calif., had taken the chemical-free pledge. They were clean and sober, and had pieces of blue plastic film all over the place.

The blue plastic is what's stripped away from the 3M film that is imaged with heat, not chemicals -- what the companies hope will be a hot new trend. (Some companies, such as Ultre* and ECRM, are developing machines that can serve as both wet and dry models.)

In addition to mollifying those nasty EPA bureaucrats who don't like you dumping toxic chemicals into the sewers, no-chemical film means you can stick your pre-press department anywhere you want. You don't have to worry about plumbing, just electricity -- and where to stash all that blue plastic stuff.

Is no-chemical film as good as the old, environmentally hostile stuff? It's too early to judge.

The negatives don't look that good, but that could be a by-product of the blue plastic stuff 3M uses (the Xerox version, Verde, doesn't have the blue stuff). Halftones on the 3M printed samples, though, looked flat, and considering that everything at a trade show is a ringer, print quality might be worth investigating before you sign on the dotted line.

In short, here's another technology you may want to watch mature from the sidelines.

What else to lull you to sleep? How about stochastic (also known as FM) screening? This new technology results in less grain, fewer moirŽ patterns and generally improved quality. It generated some pre-NEXPO press releases, but strangely, seemed an afterthought at the show itself.

Yawn. Good night.

-- JB

From THE COLE PAPERS, August 1994, Copyright (c) 1994, All Rights Reserved.