Help with Fiery Workstation 5...

[xcelprint]

Hello. We are a small shop running Xerox Versant 80, Fiery WS 5 (FS 150pro)

I want to set up to use WS 5 on my Mac in my office. We presently have the Fiery WS 5 beside the V80 in the next room. It would be so valuable and efficient for me to be able to send jobs to print from my office instead of walking down the hall to do so.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

Neal

 

[Puch]

You can mount the Fiery's share on your Mac (it appears on your desktop as a server). On that shared volume you can find everything to get connected. Basically you have to install the Fiery Mac client, which is a Java applet - make sure you use a decent Mac, otherwise it can be sluggish.

 

[jwheeler]

Hello. We are a small shop running Xerox Versant 80, Fiery WS 5 (FS 150pro)

I want to set up to use WS 5 on my Mac in my office. We presently have the Fiery WS 5 beside the V80 in the next room. It would be so valuable and efficient for me to be able to send jobs to print from my office instead of walking down the hall to do so.

You can install Fiery Command Workstation on as many computers as you'd like on your network. It's a free download on EFI's website. Mac and PC versions are available. The only limitation will be any licensed add-ons such as jobmaster, impose, or compose. Those add-on's are limited to the computer where the license resides.

 

[[email protected]]

You can install Fiery Command Workstation on as many computers as you'd like on your network. It's a free download on EFI's website. Mac and PC versions are available. The only limitation will be any licensed add-ons such as jobmaster, impose, or compose. Those add-on's are limited to the computer where the license resides.

Ditto what JWheeler said. The only trouble is that the default download now is version 6 which is better than v5 but many users are too used to using the old version. V6 has all the same functionality and then some but it's laid out differently. Here's where you can download it from; Fiery Command WorkStation

If you still want v5 then select " Find the right Fiery Command WorkStation® version for your Fiery server." from the first paragraph. Here's a v6 overview video link,

Keep in mind that EFI will eventually stop supporting V5, though me thinks not anytime soon.

 

[printing656]

While V6 is definitely more stable, I would challenge anyone who uses a central workstation to access 4+ Fierys at once and compare ease of use of 5.8 to V6. With version 6's insistent expansion of all printer details on the left, it makes it impossible to quickly navigate from one Fiery to the next since you are constantly scrolling up and down. Add to that all the different queue screens and the fact that 1 screen does not show you 'waiting to print', 'processing', and 'printing', and this version can be a major pain. If you only have 1 or 2 Fierys connected, it's not a big deal but in our case it's major pain.

 

[[email protected]]

While V6 is definitely more stable, I would challenge anyone who uses a central workstation to access 4+ Fierys at once and compare ease of use of 5.8 to V6. With version 6's insistent expansion of all printer details on the left, it makes it impossible to quickly navigate from one Fiery to the next since you are constantly scrolling up and down. Add to that all the different queue screens and the fact that 1 screen does not show you 'waiting to print', 'processing', and 'printing', and this version can be a major pain. If you only have 1 or 2 Fierys connected, it's not a big deal but in our case it's major pain.

If you haven't already you should post your thoughts on EFI's community forum: Login Template Title because I know for a fact that they value customer input.

 

[OffsetStorefront]

If you haven't already you should post your thoughts on EFI's community forum: Login Template Title because I know for a fact that they value customer input.

Was that a joke?

 

[[email protected]]

Was that a joke?

No, because they do pay attention. It may not be the improvements you wanted but they have incorporated various customer requests over the years, especially if there are enough people saying the same thing, which is why I'm suggesting you make your voice heard to them, more than just posting here.

 

[OffsetStorefront]

No, because they do pay attention. It may not be the improvements you wanted but they have incorporated various customer requests over the years, especially if there are enough people saying the same thing, which is why I'm suggesting you make your voice heard to them, more than just posting here.

Maybe the Fiery team is better at this than EFI's other software product teams. We're 6 years in using three of their other software products and making our voice heard to them hasn't panned out. Now I do both =)

 

[[email protected]]

Maybe the Fiery team is better at this than EFI's other software product teams. We're 6 years in using three of their other software products and making our voice heard to them hasn't panned out. Now I do both =)

Yeah, it's a big enough company to have some departments that are super-responsive and others not so much. The only other suggestion I can make perhaps is to work with your printer dealer or sales rep to see if they can exert some influence on your behalf, esp if you can dangle a possible printer upgrade over their head!

 

[printing656]

My experience with them has been that the Fiery team will listen, but they hardly ever do anything. I guess other experiences may vary.

 

[jwheeler]

We're 6 years in using three of their other software products and making our voice heard to them hasn't panned out.

@OffsetStorefront , which 3 other softwares are you using? And which one is problematic?

 

[OffsetStorefront]

@OffsetStorefront , which 3 other softwares are you using? And which one is problematic?

We use their Pace MIS, MarketDirect Storefront (MDSF) web-to-print, and Metrix imposition software. MDSF is just a dumpster fire. They integrated Metrix into Pace but we have yet to find a way to get it function properly, and Pace itself is the "OK-est" of the bunch with some head-scratching bugs here and there (one update they started rounding wrong in the accounting module for 3 months before they could fix it). You can get things to work if you try really hard and lower your standards quite often, but if I was the one paying the bill for these things, I'd be mad. Likely some of the most expensive licensing of their competition but the pricing or doesn't match the quality or support you get.

 

[[email protected]]

My experience with them has been that the Fiery team will listen, but they hardly ever do anything. I guess other experiences may vary.

The thing about Fiery and CWS is that each supplier (Ricoh, Xerox, etc) has their own implementation of it as it relates to a specific print engine. If a bug is identified that affects every Fiery then EFI might roll out a patch for it to all of them. However, if for example Xerox customers identify a problem then it's up to Xerox to request a patch. In either case, the fix needs to be tested with the corresponding print engine every which way from Sunday to make sure that it actually fixes the issue without breaking others. So at that point, it's dependent on how much time and money that company wants to spend de-bugging it.

It's the same thing with feature requests. EFI is willing to add new features but only if the OEMs are willing to pay for it. When EFI does it on their own they're not likely to introduce what's missing in 6.1 until 6.5, while at the same time adding other new fixes and tweaks to make it worth their while. It just seems like it takes forever because it does. A certain feature may seem indispensable to you and I but everything has an ROI and if the time and resources spent on working it into the code aren't perceived as helping to sell x-amount of new servers then it might get shelved.

Disclaimer - I don't work for EFI so mine are just observations from years of training and supporting Fiery and related products.