Prinergy - did you over buy or under buy

[DavidMa]

Been asked to post a question here for more feedback.
All you Prinergy users, if you don't mind, please:

What did you get, and what did you not get?
Did you get too much, not enough?
Now that you have it, is there something else you wished you would have gotten instead?
What would you do different if you had a choice?
I know, most of you don't control the purse, just asking for wishful thinking here, money no object, humor me.

thanks in advance for your help,
David

 

[Glenn McDowall]

What did you get, and what did you not get?
We went for Prinergy Powerpack it offered the advantages of full Prinergy plus specialist tools for handling packaging. All the bits/options that make up Prinergy are so complicated that even the sales people struggle to say what's included and whats not included. I only became fully aware of the contents of the pack during the training, to be honest when you are shown Prinergy at the Sales stage its very unclear as to which bits are extra options and which bits are included.
We ended up with
Dell Server+RAID 6x300GB (Windows Server 2008 license but with 2003 installed ?)
LTO drive
staccato 25
Archiving
RBA
Harmony
Advanced Trap
1 x normalizer (got 2?)
1 x high res Renderer
1 x lo res Renderer
1 x acrobat pro (got none)
1 x Enfocus Pitstop (Mac/PC)
Proof connectivity class1 class2
JTP class 1 Archiving
JTP class 2 Archiving
Dot Shop
OPI
5 x conncurrent Prinergy Client
1 x powerpack client (I'm assuming this is Preps and Preps Ganging)
1 x VPS
1 x Pandora plus
1 x CAD correct for CF2 files
PDF Compare
PDF Merge
We also had 2 weeks training for 2, and 1 year support.

what we didn't get:
Advanced Preflighting
Regional Versioning (Layer Versioning)
PDF File Editor
Insight
Staccato setup

Did you get too much, not enough?
Yes, and Yes. Buying the Powerpack gave us a suite of tools at a big discount to buying them individually. The RBA is powerful but overkill for us, so many of our jobs are 1 offs. OPI is never used. Staccato is useless without the setup. I wrongly assumed the Preflighting and layer versioning would be included with Prinergy and was surprised when told they would be extra. The same with PDF File Editor in version 5.
Now that you have it, is there something else you wished you would have gotten instead?
Until you start using it you don't know what your missing. Pandora and Prinergy Normalizer are excellent. Preps does some things well and some things badly (I'm comparing to Signastation and Farrukh). The Geometry Editor Acrobat Plug-in is the unsung hero.
What would you do different if you had a choice?
Nothing really, my company looked at Heidelberg, Agfa, Kodak, Screen and Enfocus, I think all offered solutions that worked well with PDFs. Pandora was so easy and offered something that the others didn't and we had to drive the existing Trendsetter.
I know, most of you don't control the purse, just asking for wishful thinking here, money no object, humor me.
If money was no object then insight, pdf editing and preflight fixes, also the ability for Prinergy to drive our inkjet proofers instead of having to create a cmyk TIFF. Still I'm fortunate to have workarounds Pitstop can handle the preflights and fixes and Heidelberg Color Editor sort out RGB, ICC and Grey.

 

[DavidMa]

thanks Glenn, that will help considerably. I appreciate it.

I sent you a PM for some additional info.

thanks,
David M

 

[Julio]

Prinergy support

Prinergy support

What did you get, and what did you not get?

We got a service contract but not support - even for known issues.

After contacting the Kodak (formerly Creo) call center where techs (the same Creo techs as always) basically 'work' on problems but fail to 'solve' the problem, I then contacted other printers and even 'googled' the internet for solutions for what turned out to be known hardware problems. While only a few parts have needed to be replaced - it takes months with days of recurring downtime before parts are actually replaced.

Prinergy support is self serve - basically customers pay for poor support. A service contract is supposed to prevent or reduce downtime not increase it. This rip has the most downtime of any we have ever had. Why don't prinergy techs know the symptoms of well known hardware problems? (Sounds like they need better training.)

Since Preps integrates with Prinergy and is supported by the same Creo techs - let's include downtime for preps as well - this is a typical case in that it takes months of finger pointing to NOT solve a problem, and a Creo manager is involved:

Dongle Problem - Page 2 - GUA Forums.

Managers either seem to be MIA or failing to hold technicians accountable for solutions.

According to this thread a manager stated that ' according to the response center Kodak is not responsible for resolving these problems ...'
http://www.b4print.com/kodak-systems/kodak-support-are-you-kidding-me/45/

Maybe we're all just calling the wrong number......

When is Kodak going to improve support for Creo equipment?

 

[DavidMa]

Thanks Julio, I'll keep your comments in mind when we talk to the Kodak folks again.

cheers,
David

 

[DavidMa]

more questions:

Prinergy users, did any of you get an ROI before purchasing, and if so, after you got it installed, how did it compare to actual?

and, what machines are you running your local clients on?
Mac or PC?
How much RAM, etc?


You can PM me if you're not comfortable posting on line.
thanks for any and all comments,
David

 

[Glenn McDowall]

We started with 6 Mac Clients we can use 5 concurrently with Workshop and get by on one floating license for Preps.
G4 1.5GHz OSX10.4.11
G5 Dual2.0GHz OSX10.3.9
G5 Dual2.0GHz OSX10.4.11
G5 Dual2.0GHz OSX10.4.11
G5 1.8GHz OSX10.4.11
intel Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz iMac OSX10.5.x

we started with Prinergy 4.0.2.4.8 (which supported OSX10.3)
now on 5.0.3.2 (which supports Acrobat 9)

the speed of Prinergy on the client hasn't been an issue, the number crunching is done on the server. The power of the client machine doesn't come into things, the OS makes a difference the 10.3.9 was slightly slower despite being the mac with the most RAM and best Graphics card. Despite the gulf in years between the G4 and intel you would struggle to notice a difference using Prinergy Workshop. Where I notice the difference in using them is Opening and displaying PDFs in Acrobat and scrolling around in VPS, faster Graphics cards = better performance.

With big multiple (200+) page jobs we used to have a bottleneck at the 'normalize stage' taking maybe an hour but with Prinergy they go through in just a few minutes, it also starts our lo-res plotter proofs without a couple of minute delay. I'd say its pretty much down to the server hardware, the old one being a Windows NT Pentium III.

Only having one license for Preps can be a bind, but if you can utilize standard templates you can select and use them directly in Workshop without needing to fire up Preps.

We mostly find ourselves queuing to use CS4 on the intel

 

[Flexo Grunt]

Working for a very large printing corporation where money was no object, management was sold on the idea of automating flexo packaging through Prinergy Powerpack. After months of MASSIVE amounts of OT, few jobs going through production, and VERY poor support, the department switched back over to Artpro and later added Nexus. Delegating Prinergy to the trash heap ( dumped on to another company) along with the manager who made the decision, we never looked back.

 

[J]

Working for a very large printing corporation where money was no object, management was sold on the idea of automating flexo packaging through Prinergy Powerpack. After months of MASSIVE amounts of OT, few jobs going through production, and VERY poor support, the department switched back over to Artpro and later added Nexus. Delegating Prinergy to the trash heap ( dumped on to another company) along with the manager who made the decision, we never looked back.

I just hate it when people beat around the bush and don't say what they really think about a product. LOL!

J

 

[DavidMa]

thanks to all, keep em' coming!

cheers,
David

 

[jb9343]

Working for a very large printing corporation where money was no object, management was sold on the idea of automating flexo packaging through Prinergy Powerpack. After months of MASSIVE amounts of OT, few jobs going through production, and VERY poor support, the department switched back over to Artpro and later added Nexus. Delegating Prinergy to the trash heap ( dumped on to another company) along with the manager who made the decision, we never looked back.

You are lucky to be able to switch in this economy, the rest of us must deal with poor Prinergy support and the overtime due to excessive downtime for what turns out to be known issues that prinergy 'experts' are not aware of:

Requested setup support and told its customer installable:
Everything is customer installable - windows server operating system, firmware, security, big upgrades. It's interesting that on our other Dell server according to Dell none of that is customer installable. Years ago when we bought Kodak proofing, Kodak provided curves etc. After Kodak bought Creo its now customer installable. Remote support could help out but just doesn't want to or when asking a tech for help we are told he is not trained - thats what customer installable really means.


Requested a recurring problem solved and support got worse. It's basically the runaround and finger pointing. The problems we experience just don't matter for too many technicians and managers - that's the real problem.


Requested a demo of prinergy features. We learned that most of the features seen in the demo are an extra charge. Apparently the base price is a bare bones rip.

Now that you have it, is there something else you wished you would have gotten instead?
What would you do different if you had a choice?
After Kodak techs and managers indicated this is the best they could do we would have bought Printect from Heidelberg with Agfa or Fuji plates. We need to be up and running without ongoing problems.