Disclaimer: I am a current user of Heidelberg Prinect. I have also used Creo, Agfa, Prinergy and Heidelberg Delta in the past. I am in no way affiliated with any vendor and all opinions I state are my own.
As I understand it Prinect is kind of the step-child of the old Prinergy which Heidelberg developed on its own after discontinuing sales of Prinergy.
I have only used Prinergy in a legacy format form years ago where I currently work. I also used a Creo workflow a few years ago and was a daily user or Preps for years. We migrated to Prinect and are very very very happy with it. I watched a Kodak webinar the other day mainly to listen to Dr. Joe Webb but I also sat through their brief walkthrough of the latest version on Prinergy Connect with RBA. From what I saw Prinect and Prinergy have gone on very different paths. Prinergy seems to be split across many different applications each requiring its own configuration.
Heidelberg Prinect has some huge advantages but also a few disadvantages. Prinect Cockpit is highly automatible but also highly customizable for a per job basis. Signa Station is in my opinion by far the leader in imposition software and seems to just keep getting better and better. I have never had a choke or crash from a MetaDimension RIP (and I have worked in 4 different Heidelberg Prinect shops). As I am currently researching our own JDF migration I have some serious concerns about the openness/compatibility of Heidelberg's JDF formats with other vendors (mainly from the MIS standpoint, few people seem to have implemented Prinect + Non-Heidelberg MIS). The Heidelberg MIS solution Prinance also is a bit rigid compared to many other MIS solutions I have been looking into. It is also somewhat of a concern to me that Heidelberg's Prinance product appears to be a joint venture between Heidelberg and outside German software company.
I'm keeping this pretty basic. If you have specific questions fire away!
