Link This |
Email this |
Blog This |
Comments (0)
A merry Christmas Eve to you!
December 24, 2007
I sought out Santa Claus in the Mendocino County town where I am spending the holidays, and found him at the local department store. I didn’t want to overwhelm him by sitting on his lap, so I invited him to join me for a peppermint-flavored mocha at a local coffee shop. We sat outside; it was a brisk sunny day. He greeted passers-by as they came and went, and we had a conversation about prepress trends.
“A lot of prepress company operators have been asking for a new PDF RIP for Christmas,” he told me, “but the elves are uncertain about delivery of that product.” he continued.
I asked about the status of products based on Adobe’s announced PDF Print Engine. “I’ve got elves in my workshops in Belgium, Germany, the U.S, and Kazakhstan working on that, and it’s taking a long time to get to market. We are going through testing now on a number of platesetters and a couple of digital devices including Mrs. Claus’s favorite Indigo – you know how she loves variable-data printing for those gift tags!”
I had to remind Santa that smoking was forbidden in the coffee shop where we shared our conversation and a peppermint mocha.
But, he lamented, “I just don’t see those products on the sleigh tonight. They’ll have to wait until next year.”
What other trends did Santa report? He went on, between sips on his peppermint mocha. “I just love the HP ink-jet products that use the new Edgeline print heads. Did you know that those print kiosks in retail stores use that now?” (I confessed that I hadn’t tried one yet.)
“The HP Photosmart kiosk can make a snapshot-size image in a couple of seconds. You just twitch your nose, and zip! you’ve got a print. Amazing, really, especially since they use ink-jet technology to compete in a photo lab marketplace. I saw a lot of greeting cards being made on those things this year. What will they think of next?”
I suggested that HP might be working on a printer that could print greeting cards in people’s homes. “Aw, they already have that!” Santa remonstrated, “but then so do Epson and Canon. Anyone can do that with those great ink-jet printers on the market. Who needs to go to a photo lab anymore?”
I admitted that I don’t know too many people who need a photo lab. Then I tried to change the subject to other trends. “How about flat-panel displays that use organic LEDs for illumination?”
Santa snorted, leaving whipped cream on his moustache. “Heck, I’ve seen the future on that front! Have you seen those big flat-panel displays? – Mrs. Claus has a huge one in the living room – pretty soon we’ll be seeing laptop computers with bright LCD screens powered by organic light-emitting diodes. They'll go for hours without running the battery down. Heck, I could use one on the sleigh tonight!”
But, I interrupted him in this outburst of excitement. “How does that affect the world of prepress and print?”
“Oh, you’ll see. You’ll see! The stability, the color quality, the view angle, they will all be better than anything on the market now. Just you wait, Mr. Lawler!”
And, then he got up abruptly and jolted from the patio of the coffee shop. “Gotta go! Gotta go!” he shouted as he ran back to the department store.
I later heard him shout as he flew overhead, “OpenType fonts make great stocking stuffers!”
Posted by Brian Lawler on December 24, 2007 | Comments (0)
