So I was in the middle of composing a 'reminder' email today and one of the Mac techs called me. A day late, but I'm happy anyway. It turns out I needed to
hold the Option button down when I add the printer. The installation guide actually said this, but they used the term "Alt" and I had sort of glanced over it. So, when I thought I needed more up-to-date software to run with 10.3, it was really me just not paying close enough attention. That, and the local rep didn't know much about the Mac install so he couldn't really help me out.
Once the driver is installed and setup correctly, printing a card is straight-forward. It's actually pretty neat to see the printer actually print the card. It's almost like it's sticking its toungue out at you and pulling it back in only to stick it out again with more color on it the next time. It prints YMCKO where "O" is the final pass, the UV protective layer.
This is the card design I'm working on. An almost unavoidable problem I don't really like is a faint white border where the ribbon does not cover. Absolutely perfect edge-to-edge cards might not be very feasible. Also, the resulting colors look slightly less brilliant and more muddy than they do on screen. I might be able to do something about this, but it will be a trial-and-error process.
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So, I'm up and running. I'm still a little miffed that the Mac drivers were not included on the CD-ROM, nor on the downloads page at the Evolis website. I told the Evolis tech guy this, and he basically said that since the software was 'free' with the printer, they could not distribute it on CD-ROM nor website download without submitting it to Apple for some type of approval process. This sounded bizarre to me, but I didn't feel like arguing too much about it.
I may continue to post my impressions as I go along. The printer itself appears to be a very promising asset for us. If you happen to be a potential customer of
Stone Mountain Pet Lodge (located in Blaine, MN USA), feel free to register your pet and we'll give you a free Pet ID, printed on the card printer.