I read your offer to help out in the latest TechNews, and boy do we need help. We just bought 11 PC workstations running Windows 95 and thought we would buy a wire-capture package from CNI in Boston and the CNI OPI package, which is basically InterSep. Now, we find out that neither the wire-capture program nor the OPI program will run on Windows 95. We're thinking of going with QuickWire for our wire capture, since it does run on Windows 95, but are at a loss on the OPI. Do you have any suggestions for OPI software? Thanks for any help you can give.
Carroll Wilson
Editor, Times Record News
Wichita
Falls, Texas
There are at least a dozen companies that sell OPI software that works with Windows clients: Archtype Inc., Autologic Inc., Cascade Systems Inc., Graphic Enterprises of Ohio Inc., Helios Software GmbH, IPT Inc., Luminous Corp., Monotype Systems Inc., PrePress Solutions Inc., Richler Graphics, Torque Systems Inc. and Xinet.
Many of these companies did not develop the OPI software themselves, but resell versions from four major suppliers--Luminous, Helios, Archetype and IPT, according to Stephen Schaffran, president of Techmark, a pre-press software-design and strategies firm.
Of these four companies, Schaffran suggests you focus on Luminous and Archetype, as they have the most experience with Windows. Luminous spun off from Adobe Systems Inc. on Jan. 1, 1996. It sells Color Central, the OPI software that Adobe used to sell and has been installed in the greatest number of sites. Archetype's software is called InterSep OPI and is the package that CNI is reselling.
According to Schaffran, both Color Central and InterSep OPI should work with Windows 95 clients. Both, however, run on Windows NT servers. Assuming that one of your workstations has a Pentium processor and at least 32 megabytes of RAM, you can turn it into an OPI server by de-installing Windows 95, installing Windows NT and then running Color Central or InterSep OPI.
For more information, you can call Luminous at (800) 685-6736 or Archetype at (800) 723-2724.
Clark Robinson
Editor, TechNews
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