Hi everyone,

We are currently looking at upgrading our Brisque v5 RIPs. They've been brilliant but their age is beginning to show with regard to speed of ripping and their inability to cleanly handle transparency.

My question is:

Kodak Prinergy vs. Heidelberg Prinect


Which system is generally regarded as the better and for what reasons?

I have no experience of either but naturally the respective sales reps say their system is the best so i'm after some (less) impartial advice.

Many thanks in advance,
Binks

This is a pretty easy call IMO. I would have to recommend Heidelberg because they are going to be a better vendor overall. Heidelberg Prinect has more broad capability and potential to automate and integrate to other devices, like pressroom, etc. So there are some features that give Prinect an edge. Prinect and Prinergy are both nice modern workflows with Prinect being a little more capable and from a better vendor.

Kodak, as you know, if you are a Brisque user, has a dramatically declined service at an higher cost than ever before. Also, as you now see, Kodak has no respect for a customer's large investment in workflow and they like to discontinue products and leverage customers around. I had a Brisque 5 workflow and upgraded last year. Of any decision I could advise, my advice is to break away from Kodak and go with another vendor. Heidelberg is better company period.

We went with an esko-Graphics SCOPE workflow to replace our Brisque and it is the most powerful and advanced workflow. SCOPE may be more power and capability than most people need but there's nothing I have seen that is as powerful and advanced. The Esko has been extremely well supported and the support costs are cheap compared to others. Compared to Kodak, we almost cost justified the Esko RIP workflow cost simply from the dramatically cheaper support costs. Then, they delivered great support that blows Kodak away. We now have better support than Creo or Scitex used to give, everyone knows that Kodak's support is worse than Creo or Scitex ever were.

So, go with Prinect, if you need some extra power and capability look at SCOPE. Prinergy is pretty good but it comes with Kodak. Good luck, HTH.
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JoePostscript -- support administrator

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Last edited by joepostscript on Oct 01, 2007 9:17 am; edited 1 time in total

Hi:

My 2 cents. I'm a Prinergy user since 2000 and had no major problems with the system. We used prinergy for processing 9 newspaper in 1 hour and i was really fast than others. But what aI want to say is that, in the beggining (as you should know) prinergy and heidelberg worked hand by hand to create the new workflow. So they are nearly equals. Support.... I don't know were you're living but consider the support you are having on brisque and probably it will be the same or even better for prinergy.
I use to work as an Software Engineer in creo and the support is not only done by the people on you country but for a huge amount of pepole specialized in belgium for remote support.
I will not change... but.... prepare your wors't work and go to make some try oouts on both...

I agree, take your most horrific jobs as is, to a demo.

Regarding the Support - we've run Heidelberg in Prepress for several years - the support is second to none, fast, smart and on the money every time.

When I say support, I'm referring to phone support and on site for repairs, etc.

Vee
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Prinect MetaDimension | Signastation | Prosetter74
XEROX iGen3 110

Thanks everyone for your answers.

It seems the general consensus is that the Heidelberg solution is every bit as good as Prinergy - something genuinely I didn't expect!

One major issue though. Prinergy can handle legacy Brisque files whereas Prinect can't. A workaround is to leave a brisque onsite and use it to convert each retrieved job to PDF, but this solution is cumbersome. Since we run a large amount of 'exact' reprints this could well be a major factor in our final decision.

I did the horrific job thing a while ago. A file on our brisque that took 3 hours to rip took 1 1/2 minutes on the prinergy system!! I have to say, Prinergy did seem quicker than Prinect. Although this could be a simple case of processor power rather than software architecture, i.e, the particular Prinergy server may have been beefier that the Prinect box.

What presses do you have, if heidelberg then prinect would be the ideal choice. If other venders then Kodak would probably be a better bet. It all comes down to how and if you want to intergrate your prepress and shop floor, which one works best.

Just thought you might want to check out the Fuji/Screen people. They were for us the best value for our size shop. Service is great. We had one service call on a latch that had to be adjusted. We called at noon and a service guy was in our shop at 7:00. He had to drive six hours from Pittsburgh. He had it fixed in fifteen minuets. Heidelberg is a great suppler but when we were pricing out our system there was a lot of funny math. I do agree though they do have great service and I have only seen them raise the bar in this area over the past few years.

The True flow front end seems to be working great. The only problem we have run across has been a few wierd page shifts but we think this was caused because the file was imposed in preps not true flows imposition program. It is also easy for our press people to make plates when a prepess guy isn't in. The change over from the Kodak Craftsmen plates to the Fuji plates was flawless. I would at the very least give Fuji a call you might save money.

Doug
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NOIDoug41

Just Match My Laser...

Ok, lets start from the begining, if you have brisque rips, i would tell that you might have a lotem or trendsetter for ctp if your case if ctf, then theres no posibility to mix the equipment with the rip if you change into heidelberg even if it is a lotem youll have that problem they arent compatible, you would have to keep your brsique as a tiff catcher. if you have a trendsetter then theres no problem as i know heidelberg still suport it. also if you want speed and flexibility you should try a harlequin rip, and if you want a full workflow, you could try the xenith rip from xitron its a great rip. and it is compatible with ctf and ctp from kodak(creo,scitex) equipment.
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Carlos SC.
carlossc_73@yahoo.com.mx
carlossc_73@prodigy.net.mx

quote:

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Originally posted by Binks:
Prinergy can handle legacy Brisque files whereas Prinect can't. A workaround is to leave a brisque onsite and use it to convert each retrieved job to PDF, but this solution is cumbersome.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Binks:
A file on our brisque that took 3 hours to rip took 1 1/2 minutes on the prinergy system!! I have to say, Prinergy did seem quicker than Prinect. Although this could be a simple case of processor power rather than software architecture, i.e, the particular Prinergy server may have been beefier that the Prinect box.

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