Vielen Danke, Ernst.
You helped me remember the complete sales pitch when I bought the printer. And for all that extra functionality, I understand why I bought it three years ago.
I wonder, however, whether HP's puck is calibrated to be as accurate on the full color range of the NEC monitor as is the NEC rebranded/tweaked X-Rite puck I picked up when purchasing the monitor at a later time. I have read that NEC fine-tuned their puck to better pick up the larger color range of their monitor. If that is true, I think I would rather not use APS because the software requires using HP's puck and my only output printer is the Z3200ps.
To be clear on what I currently do, I color correct my NEC monitor using their puck and software. I select a 2.2 gamma, and a D55 white point (yes I know most of the arguments for D65 and D50), 200:1 contrast ratio to reflect what comes out in print on the monitor, and a 120 luminance value with black point set to minimum and background light adjusted (my computer is in a room with windows and a large change in lighting conditions, and I haven't yet wanted to get a hood). I edit RAW in Lightroom, then Photoshop in 16 bit TIFF ProPhoto RGB files (exporting to a host of plug-ins depending on what I am working on). I usually print from Lightroom, soft proofing with the specific paper profile found in the HP folder (which I have assumed is or will be modified when printed with the results obtained from the Z3200ps's spectrometer - could be wrong here), and print with software managed color (not printer managed) using that same paper profile. To create paper profiles, I download manufacturers specs, upload them with HP's software, and run the spectrometer.
Any further thoughts/corrections are most welcome! I had hoped someone with your experience would chime in, as well as on questions 1 and 2, which I am beginning to believe may not have a workable solution as a practical matter. For question 3, it appears from the above and some further reading that postscript doesn't add anything for pure photographic editing - maybe for graphic artists working in other programs.
Brad