I've totally had it with windows and would love to make the final switch. planning upgrades for the coming year and would love to finally go all Mac.I would love to hear from shops who are successful with this.
Thanks Posted by Curtis hammond (Member # 2170) on :
you think you got it bad now? Wait until you try to run a hack trying to run a windows based program to run hardware.
Posted by Bill Modzel (Member # 22) on :
I've been running a Edge and GsxPlus from my old Mac since 1999, along with a Graphtec plotter and an HP Laserjet and an HP 5000 until it kicked the bucket. Right now on my Mac Pro I have a Laserjet 4650dn, a Canon iPF8300 and a Graphtec Fc7000-100 plugged in. I have Caldera set up on a Mac mini that I run via screen sharing on my MacPro. I have my HP Designjet L26500 running off the mini. I'm not sure what other plotter mfg's have available for the Mac, but I've hat 4 Graphtec's, all running via Cutting master from Illustrator. It's been a rock solid setup since 89.
Posted by Bob Rochon (Member # 30) on :
Bill, how do you design, in Illustrator or gerber software?
Posted by Robert Cole (Member # 477) on :
Bob: I run my Mimaki JV33 printer, Mimaki plotter off a Mini Mac that I recently bought used from an Apple tech guy. I use Parallels as a bridge software to run XP Pro service update #3. It runs flawlessly. The software for the printer and the plotter Both can be simply connected thru Illustrator [ I am running CS6] and I only use this set up because I have been using Mac and Illustrator / Photoshop since 1988. I love the Mac platform, and would not want to run strictly PC again.
The only reason I have kept this setup this way is that 4 years ago I came across a "very rich" graphics program that would only run on a PC. The program is called XARA, and is amazing! Though I still fall back to Adobe because of years of familiarity, Adobe' recent decision to go CC only, has caused me to rethink my personal loyalty to the Adobe Gurus.
Posted by Felix Marcano (Member # 1833) on :
They say never say never, but I have NO plans whatsoever to get another mac...
Posted by Bill Modzel (Member # 22) on :
Bob, I run my Edge and GsxPlus via MacImprint. It's an Illustrator plug in that Gerber dropped from their offerings 10 years ago. Through allot of user pressure they at least upgraded it to early OsX and Illustrator 10 but that's it. A very stupid move from GSP in my humble opinion, dump hundreds of thousand of dollars on failed printers and not, with minimal expense, upgrade something that works well and would have boosted Edge sales if their own distributer network would have actually supported it. (I'm excluding Advantage Sigh Supply from that statement).
I'll get off my soap box here because I just get frustrated after all of this time. I still get the occasional email asking where they can purchase MacImprint.
Posted by Dave Sherby (Member # 698) on :
I'm still cutting from an old Power PC Mac because my ancient Roland Camm 1 Pro from about 14 years ago just keeps plugging along without any problems, and I'm using ancient Roland Signmate for Mac software as my bridge program using illustrator files. If either machine dies and has to be replaced I am definitely going to use SignCut as my bridge program. Years ago I tried the 7 day free trial and loved it. Didn't get it though because what I thought was a "replace the plotter problem" turned out to be a very easy fix and didn't need to buy new.
You can get 1 week, 1, 2 or 6 month, 1, 2, 4 or 8 year subscriptions, or lifetime. All prices are very reasonable including the lifetime membership. You can check it out here. http://www.signcutpro.com/webshop/
Edit: Forgot to mention SignCut is for Mac or Windows. System requirements: PC: Windows 98 or higher Mac: OS X 10.39 or higher Memory: 256MB System RAM Hard Drive:120MB or more free space Output: Serial, Parallel or USB and Ethernet
[ December 30, 2013, 08:13 PM: Message edited by: Dave Sherby ]
Posted by Michael Clanton (Member # 2419) on :
I still have a Windoze XP Dell that I have my old Roland Camm-1 PNC-960 cutter connected to. It cuts directly from CorelDRAW! X3 and runs great- I have a HP Laserjet 5000 laser printer that is connected on the network, and a small Brother wireless laser printer on the network. I have a newer Dell (XP) that is running CorelDRAW! X6 on the network, 2 iMacs and 2 Macbook pros- all those work together on the network- the cutter is the only thing that I have to have dedicated.
Posted by Michael Clanton (Member # 2419) on :
It would be nice if I could cut from Illustrator/Mac, but I prefer CorelDRAW! anyway, so my current setup works OK for me at the moment.
I have used XARA, but it has been many years ago- at the time it only supported RGB and I needed to be able to work in CMYK
Posted by Bob Rochon (Member # 30) on :
Bill is MacImprint still available?
Posted by Don Coplen (Member # 127) on :
Illustrator plug in, for Macs. For what it's worth, they were advertisers here for a long time. I think they still have a free download where you can check for compatibility before buying. (The free download cuts a test square or something simple like that.)
Posted by Bill Modzel (Member # 22) on :
That's funny Bob. Just for the heck of it, drop Dana an email. I'd love for them to resurrect it. Dana.Goodale@gspinc.com
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