Thursday, February 22, 2007

The King (DTP70) is dead, Long live Queen iSis !

The DTP70 is retiring.

Quite a few people have discovered, just now, via the Colorsync list, that the DTP70 is headed for the Smithsonian. Indeed, my friends, I heard it announced in Regensdorf, the one and only DTP70, our beloved DTP70, flagship of the Xrite chartreaders, is being pensioned off .

It's just economics. There has been a takeover of Gretag by Xrite - or is it a takeover by Gretag of Xrite, I do get confused; anyway, it has been decided that the graphics products shall be mainly organized around the true and proven EyeOne technology. Invented and proven by Gretag.

Thus, simplification of the product line of the combined company explains the prior exit of Pulse -replaced by EyeOne Pro, the demise of Optix - displaced by EyeOne Display, and the redundancy of the DTP70 now that iSis is reaching the market.

But what then of the clients who invested in the DTP70 and Monaco Profiler, and who are now muttering rumors in the bazaar ? Let us be sure that Xrite will support them - anything else would be suicidal in this small market.

And software updates? Well, I have been assured that the fans of Monaco Profiler will find their favorite engine and renderings carefully preserved in a forthcoming combined offering. And of course the PMP rocket pilots will get their engine updated too.The guys and gals in Regensdorf know their surest money comes from the installed base, and don't want to offend either one of their client pools.

Which brings us back to the hardware. The replacement for our old and faithful DTP70 is the brand new iSis. The DTP70 was a tried and tested design with an incandescent illuminant , filter technology and an optical UV filter. The iSis is a modern design which incorporates EyeOne diffraction-grating spectro technology, a solid state illuminant and a vision system that can read barcodes.

iSis will doubtless bring us Swiss precision and, we do hope, reliability. This is a conservative business, and I guess it takes at least a year for the pro users to feel really comfortable with any new technology, however good.

Now please excuse me, I need to go and check some profiles I've just made.

Edmund

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