anzio print wizard

[Laura Brody]

Quoting Bob Rasmussen <ras at anzio.com>:

> 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.

   The $300 comes from a ex-customer (they drove me absolutely NUTS)
of mine who needed to share this crappy printer with half the
workers in the entire office -- hence the higher price.

> 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.

   Really, really cool capabilities that can make life easier.

> 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? :-)

   VERY. And if I was in charge, you and I would have came to
an agreement a few years ago, but unfortunately I am just one
of the many developers who does not have access to fP Tech's
checkbook.

-- 
Laura Brody
+------------- Hudson Valley Computer Associates, Inc ----------+
| PO Box 859 120 Sixth Street    http://www.hvcomputer.com      |
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