Running 3220 without C1 or C2 RIP? or PCL?

[maltobello]

Dear Experts,


My company has 17 Canon IR 3220 devices in our offices. These are all installed with ImagePass C1 and C2 RIP's. We have been having issues deploying Windows Vista because we are not able to get stable, up to date Postscript drivers for the devices. We are also looking at deploying Windows 7, 64 bit and there are no Postscript drivers available for these devices on this platform. At this point our options are:

1. Use PCL drivers which support Vista 32 bit and 64 bit platforms. Presumably these will also work on Windows 7.
2. Bypass/remove the C1 and C2 RIP's on these devices. Windows 7 32 and 64 bit drivers (Postscript) are available for this configuration.

We have tried the PCL drivers in the past, but our graphic designers were not pleased with the output. Not sure if settings could be adjusted to achieve something they would be OK with (I work for a Civil Engineering Consultant, we have 800+ people, probably 25 graphic designers). My understanding if we remove the RIP is that print speed will improve, but quality will suffer.

Can any of you weigh in on what we should expect with each of these options? Is there anything else I'm missing that we could try?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[charm5496]

More than likely you will never get drivers for the C1 or C2 rip as they are both out of date. The internal print boards from Canon are going to have print driver support up to windows 7 which is what you are going to need. After removing the rip you are going to have to install the multi-pdl board (2 boards) into the back of the machine and since they are probably going to be used you are going to have to cross your fingers and hope you don't have to reload firmware on your devices to get everything talking properly. I would reccomend having this done even if the install goes alright. Your process speed will be faster yes, but your print quality will not be what it once was having the imagepass controller removed. If you have windows 7 and VT processor chip why not have them run in XP mode for the files that they need to have printed in higher quality? And the ones who are not quality concerned should be fine with the PDL board installed.

[teckat]

are u using the PS3 4.07 driver ????

[SCREWTAPE]

Your company should consider upgrading if that's an option. IR3220,s are good models but there are bit out dated and as charm said there's a lot of things to think about with the options your considering.

[SCREWTAPE]

are u using the PS3 4.07 driver ????

I don't see that version for the imagepass C1,C2 post script driver.
There is a PS driver v4.70 but that's for the IR3220. Is that what you are refering to.
I don't see a v4.07 driver.

[teckat]

sorry you are right> i meant to list it as PS3 4.70 for irc 3200/3220/ & 2620

[SCREWTAPE]

sorry you are right> i meant to list it as PS3 4.70 for irc 3200/3220/ & 2620

LOL..
Don't sweat it man we all have our moments.

[KenB]

Just for laughs, did you happen to try the PostScript driver for the Canon GX-200 RIP?

Not an exact match, but functional. It's similar enough that the accessories should match up for your iR C3200, and your graphic artists won't complain about any degradation in print quality.

Of course, you would want to test this THOROUGHLY before rolling it out to the masses, thus preventing a potential revolt.

The download "package" contains 32 and 64 bit drivers, as well as Vista support. I would think that the Vista drivers will work in Winders 7.

You can download the file here: Canon U.S.A : Disclaimer

[maltobello]

Charm....
You are correct, Canon has come out and said that they don't plan to update drivers for the C1 and C2 RIP, so I'm pretty much giving up hope on that solution. This leaves us with PCL drivers or trying to bypass the RIP so we can use the IR3220 drivers (these do not work when attempting to print through the RIP).
XP mode in Windows 7 would be difficult to manage...we'd have to decide which apps get installed in that mode, and it is not set up to standardize across many PC's. While our designers would be most critical of print qualty, we have many other users producing documents that need similar quality as well. it's probably more important to have consistent output if the quality is something we can live with.
When you say the print quality wouldn't be as good, what do you mean by that? do you mean resolution, color accuracy, consistency or something else? The difficulty of getting the devices running without the RIP (i.e. the need to install the multi-PDL boards, might mean this isn't a feasible solution anyway).

teckat...
we've made the mistake of trying to install the IR3220 drivers and found that they do not work with the 3220 with either C1 or C2 RIP.


Screwtape...
Upgrading the devices would be the best way to deal with it, but just not an option at this point...maybe 6-12 months from now, but not a certainty then either.

KenB...
Interesting idea...definitely something I will test. We have had bad luck with the current Postscript drivers, which should work with Vista. Users can usually connect to one device (but sometimes can't), but when they try to connect to a different queue, there's some kind of conflict and the print spooler crashes. Can't hurt to try something different.

All...
I notice no one suggested just using the PCL drivers. Is this just a bad idea overall? We did some early testing, and definitely saw differences, but weren't sure if these could be addressed through config/calibration? Any thoughts on this?

Thanks again for your help.

[KenB]

You never mentioned which applications your Creative folks are using.

I will tell you that any major graphics application, InDesign, PhotoShop. Quark Xpress, PageMaker, even Acrobat all fare way better with PostScript, as these are PostScript based applications.

Without giving a dissertation on the differences between the two, color will be more accurate, images crisper, and fonts will be more detailed than with PCL. Color curves and profiles go out the proverbial window with PCL. No amount of tweaking on a PCL RIP can change this; it's just the nature of the beast.

PCL6 does a better job than PCL5 (it's HP's version of PostScript), but it's still PCL.

I don't know if you use Command Workstation or not, but it can't do anything other than reprint jobs that were sent with PCL. Jobs sent with PostScript, though, can be changed drastically.