Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

psaros · 02:46 PM

anyone have any thoughts on the very wide spread in quarkxpress prices? j&R has it for $860 and buy come has it for $740 -$20= 720 free shipping. Same at ecost. Seems like a fairly big spread for software. Quark is selling from their site at $995. That is a $280 differential, and buy.com is a very reputable seller. Some of the versions are 6.0 but upgrade is free. Several of these dealers dont charge tax or shipping which is means spread is about $350.

Chuckit · Jun 2, 2004, 02:54 PM

It sounds like Quark has recommended a very high retail price.

-Q- · Jun 2, 2004, 04:48 PM

More often than not, a software developer will sell their product at the full retail price so as to not compete with their retail partners (See Apple's problems with their third-party resellers for an illustration of what can happen if you do so). Other price discrepancies can occur when a retail vendor has a 'preferred' agreement with a retailer, or buys product in such quantities that they can command a significant discount from the manufacturer, allowing them to charge far less than the nearest competitor (see Wal-mart for this model). Really, all you're seeing is an illustration of the economies of scale. If they're a reputable dealer, go for the cheapest price. The 'quality' won't be any different.

Angus_D · Jun 3, 2004, 05:29 AM

Seriously avoid Quark if you can.

mitchell_pgh · Jun 3, 2004, 08:51 AM

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Seriously avoid Quark if you can.

While I'm on the fence about Quark at times, it's kept me with plenty of work over the past years. I have InDesign, and it's great, but not all of my local printers enjoy taking the InDesign projects (they take them, but there is usually one or two little issues) and Quark doesn't seem to have that problem (None of the printers I use have switched over to Quark 6 yet, so I'm constantly having to downgrade to Quark 5, but it hasn't caused any major deals.

Quark feels like an average OS 9 port, but it gets the job done. Most of the people that hate quark are newer (as in the past five years) designers (notice I didn't say amateur as InDesign has all [if not more] capabilities then Quark and many newer PRO designers are using InDesign).

I also don't like that fact that you can't give your printer a ID CS file if they have ID 2 (obviously) but you also can't save back to ID 2 from ID CS... (I understand why this happens, but it's still annoying)

Angus_D · Jun 4, 2004, 08:43 AM

I don't really know much about printing, but I was under the impression most printers could accept PDFs these days?

I've just seen evidence that Quark doesn't take the Mac platform seriously, and InDesign is cheaper anyway isn't it? *shrug* I wouldn't use it if I could get away with it.

chris v · Jun 4, 2004, 10:31 AM

I had a Quark sales guy call me trying to sell Quark 6 a couple of days ago. I had the distinct pleasure of telling him that I had yet to receive a Quark 6 file from a client, and that I was generating new content in InDesign. After that, he didn't even try. He just said "Okay, thank you," and hung up.

CV

Macola · Jun 4, 2004, 10:42 AM

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:

Quark feels like an average OS 9 port, but it gets the job done. Most of the people that hate quark are newer (as in the past five years) designers (notice I didn't say amateur as InDesign has all [if not more] capabilities then Quark and many newer PRO designers are using InDesign).

As a professional designer for the past 10+ years who just switched to ID3 (CS), I would have to say I don't hate Quark (the product) but rather Quark (the company). So far, all my print vendors are using a PDF workflow (some even prefer PDFs) and I'm pretty happy with ID.

psaros · Jun 20, 2004, 04:28 PM

I pretty much have to get quark. My wife is a professional senior designer with a large design firm, and also teaches quark at college level a semester or two a year.

Yes many people are switching to in design, but for that matter many design firms are switching to win-pc. She has a good handle on in-design and we've got that for home as well, but the fact is that if you have an investmeent in projects and knowledge in quark you aren't just going to drop it.

interestingly although I resent having spent the $700, I am actually more concerned about printing issues with quark on a non postscript less than $400 printer.

Macola · Jun 20, 2004, 04:51 PM

Originally posted by psaros:

interestingly although I resent having spent the $700, I am actually more concerned about printing issues with quark on a non postscript less than $400 printer.

If that's a big issue for you, then definitely go with ID. I get excellent color proofs on a standard (non-Postscript) inkjet straight from ID. With Quark (at least in 4.x), I had the extra step of outputting a PDF and even then not getting very good color.