MacEdition Pro News : September 14, 2001

by MacEdition Staff (feedback)

Hewlett-Packard wants to print your proofs

Hewlett-Packard may now be some hybrid entity as the result of a shotgun wedding with the Big Q, but they're still producing some whiz-bang printers for those involved in print and pre-press. From the press release:

PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 5, 2001 – Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HWP) today introduced three graphics printers with exceptional color accuracy and remote proofing capabilities.

The HP Designjet 10ps, HP Designjet 20ps and HP Designjet 50ps printers are part of a company-wide commercial printing initiative to improve printing and pre-press processes. Graphics professionals can now affordably bring true, pre-press proofing in-house, producing in minutes what previously could take days to complete.

Combining remote proofing functionality with color sensing technology, the printers allow graphic designers, printers, pre-press houses or marketing professionals to easily share files over the Internet and print them with the assurance of consistent color from print to print and printer to printer.

"The printers achieve superior color consistency by recalibrating every system to the same reference state and embedding the color information in the remote proofing files," said Isidre Rosello, lab manager, HP Inkjet Commercial Division. "Using an ultra-precise sensor, the closed-loop color calibration system achieves the ultimate in color accuracy and performance."

The HP Designjet 10ps is an ideal solution for graphic designers who need a personal printer. The HP Designjet 20ps printer offers extra paper handling and server-based processing – ideal for workgroup printing. The HP Designjet 50ps printer builds upon the features of the HP Designjet 20ps printer with special software licensed from Heidelberg Druckmaschinen AG to provide a complete pre-press proofing solution.

Key specifications of the HP Designjet 10ps, HP Designjet 20ps and HP Designjet 50ps printers include:

• Top color accuracy with up to 90 percent of Pantone colors and 100 percent of all major offset color standards (SWOP, EuroScale, TOYO, DIC) through a software Adobe™ Postscript® 3™ Raster Image Processor (RIP) for Mac and Windows;
• Superior image quality through six-color printing, 2400 x 1200 dots-per-inch output on premium photo paper, HP Photoret III color-layering technology, 4 picoliters drop size and dye black ink;
• High-speed printing, even when printing at the "best" quality – an 11 x 17-inch full-bleed glossy image on 13 x 19-inch media can be printed in approximately four minutes;
• Creation of remote proofing files based on Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) and Job Definition Format (JDF) standards;
• Affordable, high-capacity ink cartridges and durable printheads that require little user intervention.

New media is available for the HP Designjet printers, including HP Proofing Matte and HP Proofing Semi-gloss for proofs with the look and feel of offset prints and HP Proofing Gloss for premium presentation proofs.

Users of the HP Designjet graphics printer have access to online Web support 24 hours a day or they can call the HP Customer Care center from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST Monday through Friday. Warranty extensions, as well as installation and network configuration options, also are available.

Pricing and Availability

The HP Designjet 10ps and HP Designjet 20ps printers are expected to be available this fall. The HP Designjet 50ps printer is expected to be available in spring 2002. Estimated U.S. list prices are as follows:

HP Designjet 10ps printer: $995
HP Designjet 20ps printer: $1,795
HP Designjet 50ps printer: $3,495

Pricing may vary by the 2002 release date.

"It's now a beta!" - Opera for Mac OS X, that is.

Mac OS X users have another product to declare, "It's just a beta!" without fear of being considered cynical. Opera 5 for Mac OS X Carbon Beta 1 brings closer feature parity between Classic and Carbon versions. From the press release:

Oslo, Norway - August 31, 2001 - Opera Software today released Opera 5 for Mac OS X Carbon Beta 1. The Opera 5.0 for Mac, which has received international recognition for its speed, small size and standards-compliance, now offers Mac users the same stability whether they use systems 7.5.3 to 9.x or Mac OS X Carbon.

Mac OS X Carbon users can now enjoy keychain support and auto-completion of URLs like their fellow Mac users were offered through the release of Opera for Mac Beta 2 at Macworld in New York, July 18. Furthermore, users are offered an extra button set originally designed for MacWorld which blends well into the design of Mac OS X, in addition to the default Opera button set.

"The development toward a final version for all systems for Mac users is important to us," says Hakon W. Lie, Chief Technology Officer of Opera Software, "and we are very happy to announce that we now can offer the same stability to all our Mac users."

Opera 5 for Mac OS X Carbon Beta 1 will work with Mac OS X Carbon in the native mode. Opera 5 for Mac OS X Carbon Technology Preview supports the following World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards: 128-bit encryption, TLS 1.0, SSL 2 and 3, CSS1 and CSS2, XML, HTML 4.01, HTTP 1.1, ECMAScript, DOM and WAP/WML. Opera 5 for Mac OS X Carbon Beta 1 has powerful search features where users can easily move between the most popular search engines, and search for terms, domain names or stock quotes.

Get it now at www.opera.com/mac/.

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