[SPAM] Re: anzio print wizard

[Bob Rasmussen]

On Fri, 1 Feb 2008, Laura Brody wrote:

>    I think that everyone on this list who has had the pleasure
> of dealing with the computer-ignorant public can tell you
> that they honestly believe that "a printer, is a printer, is
> a printer". Other than obvious physical differences (i.e it
> can duplex, has paper trays for letter and legal sized paper,
> or can print in color), techie details such as printer languages,
> built in fonts and "host-based" engine simply don't mean
> squat to them. They buy whatever is cheapest and has the
> bells and whistles on it that they DO understand, drag it back
> to the office and then call their computer guy/gal to install
> it when the designated "office geek" can't make it work.
> They usually get a bit cranky when you have to tell them that
> they need to spring for Print Wizard for $300 (plus pay you
> to configure it) to make their free or almost free printer
> print from filePro. They thought that they really got a sweet
> deal on the printer and that all they have to do is install it
> and go.
> 
> Then reality kicks them in the teeth.
> 
> Since the brain-dead el cheapo printer can print from Notepad
> and MS Word, they then conclude that filePro is defective
> because it needs extra help to print to this steaming pile
> of a printer.

The cost for a solution from us would often be less than $300.

Let's break it out into subclasses of customers.

1) The filePro runs on Unix/Linux. In this case, they must have a terminal 
emulator. Most can do passthrough print in a way that uses the Windows 
printer driver. However, they will get only "nocodes" (plain text) 
printing. Anzio Lite ($40, qty. 1) works this way. 

A better terminal emulator (AnzioWin, $150 qty. 1) can translate PCL-5 
codes and drive their brain-dead printer.

2) The filePro runs on Windows. Since filePro supports printcodes for 
fancy printing, and it runs on Windows, it might be reasonable for the 
user to expect filePro to support all Windows printers. But it doesn't. 

In this scenario, our solution is Print Wizard Personal Edition (PWPE), 
which is $99 qty. 1. It's quite easy to setup filePro on Windows to send 
its print jobs through PWPE to the printer.

3) The user runs FPGI. Here, I know just enough to be dangerous.

With either AnzioWin or PWPE, the user gets other capabilities as well, 
such as the ability to create PDFs.

So it seems perfectly reasonable that FP Technologies would contract with 
us to provide a tightly integrated Print Wizard (our DLL, say, called from 
filePro), as a feature on every Windows-based filePro. Users could then 
drive it as they expect, with printcodes translated to PCL-5 translated to 
Windows printing API calls.

Don't you all think that's reasonable? :-)

Regards,
....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

personal e-mail: ras at anzio.com
 company e-mail: rsi at anzio.com
          voice: (US) 503-624-0360 (9:00-6:00 Pacific Time)
            fax: (US) 503-624-0760
            web: http://www.anzio.com