Sneak Peek at New ULS Driver results

[David Dustin]

We had a chance to see the results from the upcoming release of the ULS printer driver incorporating technology for photographs (I am intentionally not mentioning the name in case it is not supposed to be public).

All I can say is WOW, I can even say it backwards, WOW.
If it is even half as good as it looks it will be great for ULS users.

If I can get permission, I'll post an image from it.

I don't have the driver, just images created from it.

WOW

David

[Frank Corker]

Thanks David, that's like my wife saying, "I've bought you a beautiful present for your birthday, but I'm not going to let you see it!"

[Scott Shepherd]

You mean the new driver that the factory folks at a show in May said would be out next week (a.k.a. June)? :)

I stopped waiting for it at my mailbox about 3 months ago :)

[Frank Corker]

Oh no, not the one that is going to be able to send a photograph straight through that doesn't need any input from Photograv is it?

[Brian J Rogalny]

I heard from Dave Stevens that the driver would be available by the end of this month, at a Universal seminar I attended given by my salesman this past Tuesday. He said that it is really increadible what this driver can do. He also said that there is no wood setting for this application, and it will come out in a later driver.

[Scott Shepherd]

Oh no, not the one that is going to be able to send a photograph straight through that doesn't need any input from Photograv is it?

Yup, that's the one. I think Mike Mackenzie said the reps got it for testing a couple of weeks ago.

Keeping in mind, and this is purely an educated guess, since the reps just got it, this driver will probably still be a beta version of the driver. That's fine too, I'll up for beta testing that puppy.

[David Dustin]

Told you so......

And I think it would be a great idea to have a group of us doing beta testing on it.

I told my regional sales manager that I can find bugs in anything.
I'm not sure why exactly, but it seems to be related to my Enginerd background and asking "what does this do?"

David
(Frank, sorry for the tease)...

[Scott Shepherd]

I told my regional sales manager that I can find bugs in anything.

I wish everyone else knew how funny that was :)

Probably zero chance of you beta testing ;) hehehehe :)

[David Dustin]

Seriously,
Regardless of the sotfware or device, if there is a bug or a strange combo the causes a crash I seem to be able to find it.

If I do as an official Beta Test it can be enjoyable, but if we as users end up getting used as unwitting beta testers for production releases, it is harder "enjoy" it.

David

[David Dustin]

Well we were told back in October we would get a copy to try out (Onetouch as they were calling it then).
It has been 2 months and not a word, even though we have asked/offered repeatedly.

Ya'll said they were "misleading" me to think it would actually be out in 2 weeks.
You were all right.

Why promise something they know they are not going to deliver.
This is like when you fly and they tell you there has been a slight delay in your flight of 10 minutes.
I don't know about the rest of you, but as soon as I hear those words (I used to fly a lot) I know they are lying and the flight will either be an hour late or it will be canceled. You always see the "pro" travelers immediately scramble to get a different flight because THEY have experience.

Ya'll are like that, you have experience dealing with Universal for longer than me.

David

[Scott Shepherd]

David, I don't know what's going on at ULS, but it's so obvious to their users. From the buzz I have heard in the rumor mill, there was a number of long time ULS employees who quit. Not little guys, big guys. Those were the people who helped get ULS to where they are today. It appears from the outside there is new management at ULS. I don't know if it is or not, but that's what it appears to be to me.

The new management seems more eager to make promises they can't keep (my guess is someone with a sales background is now calling the shots, where as before, someone with a manufacturing background was calling the shots- that's 100% a guess from an outside manufacturing guy of 20+ years).

I was at a Sign Convention a couple of weeks ago and stopped by the ULS booth. I asked the guy when it would be out and he said "soon", and I told him I had been hearing that since the spring. He said "Well, there's the guy who can tell you, he's from the factory" and I turned around and looked. My next comment to him was "He's the guy who told me in the spring it would be could next week". The guy heard me say this, saw some people walking up, and headed right over to help them, as if he didn't want to have the conversation.

I don't know what's going on with ULS, and I have no complaints about my machine or their support, but there clearly has been a massive change at Corporate and it's a change for the worse on the public relations side of things.

Hopefully they will iron it all out and get back to smooth sailing, but for now, from the outside looking in, they are doing a very poor job at customer relations.

[Mark Winlund]

Sounds like Xenetech... the salesdroids have taken over...

Mark

[john welsh]

you can engrave a digital photo straight from your pc to an epilog engraver without any work done on it until you get to the print driver set up then all you need do is select stucki in the image quality menu and bobs your uncle (or may be he isn't) .
we have been doing this for about 6 months and even a 72dpi web image comes out at an acceptable standard .

but then again i guess someone knows different ? and will shoot me down in flames :)

[Stephen Beckham]

you can engrave a digital photo straight from your pc to an epilog engraver without any work done

John - I agree - there was some big buzz about it during the summer. I tested it and then my ribbon cable went out - I thought it was the stucci driver... But before the cable went out, it seem to do the trick quite nice... I was all excited that I could skip out on the Photo Grav step....

Hadn't even thought about it again since I replaced the ribbon cable... (Panic set in at the failure and I think I lost a part of my brain cell clump that recalls memory) Hmmm... Might have to go back to it and do some more comparison to the PG 2.1... I'm not too eager to upgrade to PG 3....

And we all know cutting a step out without cutting the quality increases the earnings...

[john welsh]

you can tweak stucki settings in coral draw if you need to , the average i find is around mid point although lower or higher settings work if the photo is full of dark areas or vice versa