Hi Neil,
Wow. Thanks for all the information. I really appreciate it.
I expect to be doing more testing now that things have firmed up.
On another note, I only wish HP had made an upgrade for Z3100ps owners and the dreaded "red" issues supposedly "fixed" in the Z3200 series. My reds are deficient (so orange it's amazingly not red) with either driver, and on almost all media but especially the matte papers.
IMO, the product cycle has been sped up to the point where unless you are really a big deep pocketed user you cannot keep up with the technology which is really regrettable because in the end it reflects back badly on everybody.
If HP could only have made things like this an optional paid upgrade, IMO, I would appreciate that, and could probably afford that. I cannot however "upgrade" to a new Z3200ps without too much hassle and $$$$. And IMO, no, this type of upgrade is not like the upgrade of the Canon 5D to the Canon 5D Mk II which I think was used as an excuse by someone (or something like that). Sigh.
Thanks again, and so long for now, TOM
The PS models have a true Adobe Postscript rip on a chip on the comm card where your Ethernet connection is plugged in.
IT is a robust little chip with enough horsepower to run anything I could find and then some.
What you do need to know is it converts or maintains an all three channel workflow. So the color world created when it rasterises will convert the colors in a way that is optimised for the Z. By doing so variables are taken out of the workflow which is a good thing.
Firmware can be a bad thing though, if the evolution of the the raster drivers are changed incongruently to the PS driver/firmware.
I could be wrong but I believe the PS chip has a specific engine code that is not changed with firmware updates.
So if there are color variations between the PS updates, raster updates and firmware as well it only makes sense that there will be differences.
Normally the PS driver should send the elements over Ethernet or USB to be rasterised (spooled sort of) in the printer whereas the raster driver has to spool the data on the host computer.
Another advantage of the PS version is of course run length in theory but I found it choked at the time just as easily as the raster version of the driver if the res was more than 225 ppi. on long prints.
In terms of color in the beginning there were no differences between the PS and non PS. Even after several firmware updates I saw no differences. That could have changed, but there wouldn't be such a difference that calibration and profiling wouldn't adjust the differences.
Oh if you're printing from Adobe applications the color engine should be very similar if not identical to each other too. Where there would be slight differences would be if the CMM was set to a non ACE engine.