Thanks for sharing, Ron. That's really great to know. Now I'm kind of glad I waited.
I checked the site and the firmware is still available. Hopefully we'll see it withdrawn from the website to confirm the reps story. I wondered why the driver never got put up.
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I asked him why they bothered with having an email notification program if they didn't use it, relying on our own word of mouth to spread the fact that there is a new firmware update. His reply was pretty funny, before he caught himself. He said that there are two types of users of these machines: pros and amateurs. To implied that they were concerned that amateurs might hurt themselves with new firmware, whereas pros would know what to do with it. When he realized that he had just inadvertently insulted me, he dropped that line of thought pretty quickly. I was already pretty worn out from three different accidental hangups from HP in transferring my calls, and a trip to the "color center" tech for no reason, so it wasn't worth pursuing the argument with him. The color guy, who eventually kicked me back to Mac support when he couldn't help me, said that he hadn't updated his printer or computer with the new firmware himself. I thought that was a little curious.
I asked both guys if there was any written documentation about the new firmware and neither knew of any, nor knew themselves what changes had been implemented, aside from the new paper types.
The bottom line for me is that I can now print with more paper types that were previously called Custom, as long as I choose the right substitute paper type to fool the PS driver. Since it has not been updated, it doesn't get all of the new paper options from the printer. I can have multiple brands of paper with the same paper preset of Pearl or one of the other Custom papers and have a separate calibration for each, just like other papers now.
I also tested the deckled edge feature, and while challenging to load, it is now possible. With so little to align the side of the paper with when correcting paper skew, it is important that the deckled edge be square with the side of the paper. Without being able to align the deckled edge with the blue line, you have little hope of ever making the printer happy enough to complete the paper load. I saw no sign of a manual override option that was previously discussed for paper loading as a new feature.
Was there also not a discussion about being able to bypass the paper presets and manually adjusting ink limiting with this new firmware? I can't figure out how, if so.
-Ron H.