Do you use Xerox MakeReady?

[ReproElectroProspero]

I'm curious if anyone uses the Xerox FreeFlow software known as MakeReady.

We use it in our shop to build books that are reprinted often, so that we can save the exception pages and specific stock settings so our operators don't have to manually set them up all the time when they're reordered year after year. Really simple use-case, nothing fancy.

I recently found out our shop is paying Xerox $4,500 a year to use this software. My head about popped off when I learned this.

I investigated and found that apparently the previous manager around here signed up for a "Full Software Support & Maintenance" on this software with Xerox. I've been trying for two weeks now to get through to someone at Xerox who can tell me what that means, and if I can just buy the software outright without "support" since we literally barely use the software. I have heard nothing but crickets.

So I'm curious - do any of you fine printers use this software? If so - do you own it outright? Are you charged an arm and a leg for it? I'm looking for answers. I saw in a previous thread here that software exists to convert RDO files to PDFs and retain ticketing information. I'm definitely considering buying that if Xerox wants to say this software costs this much a year with no other option.

Thanks for your insights!

 

[[email protected]]

I'm curious if anyone uses the Xerox FreeFlow software known as MakeReady.

We use it in our shop to build books that are reprinted often, so that we can save the exception pages and specific stock settings so our operators don't have to manually set them up all the time when they're reordered year after year. Really simple use-case, nothing fancy.

I recently found out our shop is paying Xerox $4,500 a year to use this software. My head about popped off when I learned this.

I investigated and found that apparently the previous manager around here signed up for a "Full Software Support & Maintenance" on this software with Xerox. I've been trying for two weeks now to get through to someone at Xerox who can tell me what that means, and if I can just buy the software outright without "support" since we literally barely use the software. I have heard nothing but crickets.

So I'm curious - do any of you fine printers use this software? If so - do you own it outright? Are you charged an arm and a leg for it? I'm looking for answers. I saw in a previous thread here that software exists to convert RDO files to PDFs and retain ticketing information. I'm definitely considering buying that if Xerox wants to say this software costs this much a year with no other option.

Thanks for your insights!

You might be thinking of a software product called ReadyPrint, sold and supported by Rochester Software Associates (RSA) that can import RDO files directly with some ticketing intact. (rocsoft.com)

 

[ReproElectroProspero]

You might be thinking of a software product called ReadyPrint, sold and supported by Rochester Software Associates (RSA) that can import RDO files directly with some ticketing intact. (rocsoft.com)

I was actually thinking of Océ DPconvert but I really appreciate the other possible option!

 

[kslight]

That’s the case with a lot of the software add-ons, across the board…nothing is ever free and it’s rare to be able to “buy” the software outright, or it would be insane. When shopping always make them itemize the proposal so you can decide it’s worth it.

 

[Stickman42]

I run FreeFlow on Nuveras. When I have a complex job setup, there's 2 ways I go about it. I either "Save" the job on the Nuvera itself, or File>Print the job from Acrobat with the Xerox print driver. This driver allows you to program all the job attributes (mixed media, covers, inserts, exception pages, finishing, etc...) and save those settings for reuse. There's not a lot of available drive space on the Nuvera, so I most often go with the latter.

 

[ReproElectroProspero]

I run FreeFlow on Nuveras. When I have a complex job setup, there's 2 ways I go about it. I either "Save" the job on the Nuvera itself, or File>Print the job from Acrobat with the Xerox print driver. This driver allows you to program all the job attributes (mixed media, covers, inserts, exception pages, finishing, etc...) and save those settings for reuse. There's not a lot of available drive space on the Nuvera, so I most often go with the latter.

Do you just save an *.xps ticket and keep it with the pdf? We have hundreds of books that have dozens of different insert pages and such, this seems like it could be a good solution - though I would miss MakeReady's imposition tools. I'm sure I could find better imposition software for cheaper though.

 

[KopyBoss]

I'm curious if anyone uses the Xerox FreeFlow software known as MakeReady.

We use it in our shop to build books that are reprinted often, so that we can save the exception pages and specific stock settings so our operators don't have to manually set them up all the time when they're reordered year after year. Really simple use-case, nothing fancy.

I recently found out our shop is paying Xerox $4,500 a year to use this software. My head about popped off when I learned this.

I investigated and found that apparently the previous manager around here signed up for a "Full Software Support & Maintenance" on this software with Xerox. I've been trying for two weeks now to get through to someone at Xerox who can tell me what that means, and if I can just buy the software outright without "support" since we literally barely use the software. I have heard nothing but crickets.

So I'm curious - do any of you fine printers use this software? If so - do you own it outright? Are you charged an arm and a leg for it? I'm looking for answers. I saw in a previous thread here that software exists to convert RDO files to PDFs and retain ticketing information. I'm definitely considering buying that if Xerox wants to say this software costs this much a year with no other option.

Thanks for your insights!

We run FreeFlow MakeReady on three Nuveras. Support and Maintenance you're paying for updates and for a tech to come out if you have problems with the software. We canceled our maintenance years ago so we pay nothing all the updates were minor plus every year Xerox has in the contracts that they can add price increase if
your manager was not checking the yearly renewal you was most likely hit with increases.

 

[TJPrinter]

Take a look at Fiery Archive Manager. It's free with your Fiery and you can save and manage your frequent jobs on a network drive or other storage. You don't need to save the archived jobs on the Fiery which will save on your storage capacity on the Fiery. Then anyone that has access to the file will also have all the presets saved. On my CWS there is a tab between jobs and servers "Archive Manager" this should guide you through the setup.