If you volume is low enough and your CPU high enough, buy the printers
without the IPDS and see if all prints correctly. If you see a big CPU
hit or print is not correct, then purchase the IPDS and add. Just make
sure you can get the IPDS option for the printers and that they have
them in stock ready to send to you if you need them. Make this
agreement with the vender up front. If the vender is not willing to do
so, take it to corporate to rethink the vender.
Chris Bipes
Director of Information Services
CrossCheck, Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[
mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tom Kreimer
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 8:45 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: IPDS printer option worthyness
We are changing to a single print vendor for all our locations and
will be
replacing most every printer (corporate has already made this
decision, I
don't need any recommendations for vendors!). Some of our printers
are
IPDS printers now, but most use host print transform to regular old
PCL
printers.
Is getting an IPDS option for printers still worth it? This option
usually
adds $500 or more to the cost of the printer.
With host print transform, the host system has to do extra work like
translate the data from EBCDIC to ASCII and translate the whole job
to
PCL. On older systems, this could take some time, but I have not
noticed
any print delays for a couple of iSeries generations.
What about access to printer features? Output fidelity? Any other
considerations I am overlooking?
I should note that we are not a high-volume print shop. Some of our
printers might print 300 pages a day, but that is probably tops.
midrange.com
