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Jersey Thursday · Feb 2, 2001, 09:55 AM

Am I the the only one in the country with a Mac who has purchased the Xerox Phaser 790? If not, I would love to get the impression from other owners. My initial impression is that it is bind boggling fast but very quirky in the software support (especially for the Mac) and very erratic in print quality. This variance seems to come from program to program (QuarkXpress, FreeHand, etc.).

The take over of Tektronix by Xerox does not seem a seamless one. For example when you contact tech support and inform them you are using a Mac they refer you to the tech support at Tektronix, who, in turn, tell you they feel Xerox jumped the gun by releasing this printer before they had all the bugs worked out. Makes one feel somewhat sick to their stomach after spending $7100.

Any insight by other 790 owners is appreciated .

denim · Feb 2, 2001, 10:22 AM

I don't know about the 790, but we got a 750. Didn't hook it to a Mac, though.

Fred CHOTTIN · Feb 4, 2001, 03:29 PM

Thanks for the info as i was about getting one. It is strange to note that Xerox has been putting ads about the 790 on a lot of Mac-related sites in Europe and especially in France. Are you sure you got the latest drivers? The samples prints i saw were coming from Mac G4 seemed very good to me even if not equal to latest ink-jets printers.

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Fight against the Dark Force (Microsoft)

TomT · Feb 5, 2001, 02:57 AM

I have installed three Phaser 790s at client sites so far. The print quality is superb,, the print speed is also superb. We have experienced a few quirks with the Fiery spooling software, but all-in-all I would give this printer very high marks.

Jersey Thursday · Feb 5, 2001, 08:43 AM

TomT ,

Thank you for responding to my post. I felt I was alone out there in regards to the 790. I have a few questions based on your experience:

While in the print dialog box under Printer Specific Options - do you change any of the default settings? I have found the changing the CYMK Simulation Profile and Out put Profile makes the biggest difference. You can upload different ICC profiles to the printer Via Colorwise Pro Tools. The only problem is that I have yet to find a combination that I am totally happy with.

In addition, we have found the duplex registration to be consistently off by about 1/8 " (a universal problem confirmed by tech support). I hope they come up with a fix soon. for that was a $1,000 option.

Lastly, have you noticed the monitoring of consumable levels via the Fiery Link software seems a bit less informative than the software with the Tektronix 780?

Any insight on the these issues would be greatly appreciated.

TomT · Feb 5, 2001, 12:03 PM

We haven't done a lot of profile playing (our clients already had theirs built for their needs) as yet.

I have found the same duplexing problem (1/16" - 1/8" off front/back)

I've not used the fiery to manage consumables. Usually a quick check of the control panel is good enough for us.

ddiokno · Feb 7, 2001, 01:32 PM

I mentioned this to one of my buddies who is an account manager at Tektornix (he has been with them for 15+ years... started out as service), and he said he will look into the problem and pass it along to his team... he is a Mac User and hasn't seen any problems with it on either platform, but is very interested in helping out... so hopefully he will chime in soon...
dave
I can't speak to this printer (although I would like to get one)... i have an 850DP, which is awesome...