Southside has colour printing all Zipped up
There is little doubt that in the last few years, PCs have made definite inroads to the printing industry, and now play an important role in what was previously an entirely Macintosh-based industry. In adapting to this change, many Mac-based printers have had to find ways of reading and processing jobs developed both on PCs and on Macs.
One such company is Southside Colour Copy, an Engadine-based print bureau which specialises in all forms of colour and digital printing. The company, which started out more than nine years ago as a colour copy shop, has managed to capitalise on the recent growth in digital imaging and for the past three years has been offering a whole range of printing services to its customers.
The company's owner, Vanessa Hurst, has noticed a definite increase in the number of her clients now working from PCs and feels that the ease with which she is able to process both Mac and PC files is one of her business's major assets.
"A few years ago, less than five per cent of our customers were PC users," said Ms Hurst. "However, we are now working with a number of small companies who are doing their own artwork and desktop publishing in order to cut costs. This means that anywhere up to thirty per cent of our customers are now working on PCs and sending us files that were created on PCs."
Several years ago, Southside Colour Copy decided to simplify its printing processes with the introduction of an Iomega® Zip® drive. The drive gave Vanessa and her team the ability to quickly and easily read and process large files from the one computer, irrespective of whether they were created on a Mac or a PC.
"Because Zip is well suited to both Macs and PCs, it has created a standard platform which everyone understands and by which all users can exchange files," said Ms Hurst. "In this industry the ability to download PC files is extremely important, and the Zip drives have enabled us to simplify the way we read PC files from our Macs. The Zip drive enables me to cue things up quickly without changing either computers or programs."
Prior to the purchase of her three Zip drives, Vanessa had been using a combination of floppy disks and several Syquest drives to transfer information and back up her files. However, with constant reliability and compatibility issues, Vanessa began looking around for an alternative storage solution.
"When we started looking for a new type of drive, word was spreading through the design industry that Zip drives were very reliable and, with 100 megabytes of space in a smaller, more compact size, it seemed like the ideal storage solution. When all our customers started converting to Zip, we realised we had made the right decision, it was definitely the way the design industry was heading."
Vanessa now feels that Zip drives have become a standard within the printing industry, a vast majority of the files she sends and receives are transferred via Zip disks. As Vanessa points out, the industry is now at a point where everyone who is serious about running a business is using Zip.
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