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We have been using Printshop Mail for over 8 years without issues as you describe, however we are using 7.1 and have not upgraded to the 7.2 version. Our use of Printshop mail is primarily for envelope addressing and numbering. We have 2 Imagepress 7010 and a 1110p Black and white, we just install an Canon 800 and I have tried to use Printshop Mail for a simple NCR numbering job and ran into issues for the first time. In this case the first set printed fine but after that it would number only the second sheet leading me to believe there may be some issue with the rip on the 800. We however are using the less powerful G100 rip.

Mike Pheil
Partner
Xpress Graphics
Palm Desert CA

Hello Mike,

Thanks for your response and update on Print Shop Mail. I have been thinking about InDesign, (and had a call this morning from a mailing software company who stated that he had a huge number of clients that use InDesign for VD). Adobe's suite might be the way to go, even PhotoShop's VD will work. I think this would be a much better choice than PSM.

Print Shop Mail results:

PROBLEM ONE: When trying to print an 8-page color newsletter, self cover, the PSM Tech support finally suggested sending one newsletter at a time to eliminate the ending error when printing 840 newsletters after processing for more than 2.5 hours, several times.

I had been convinced that the PSM software was the win-all for VD and that it would process the images only once to the printer which would speed the printing. I have tried every selection...this does not work properly.  This month we decided to split the job into 4-groups of 200, however, it still took over 30 minutes to process each group before printing.

PROBLEM TWO: On 4-up postcards, 6" x 8", PSM would not print the ("standard" only choice or Japanese) trim or register marks, (and yes tech support logged onto our computer trying many times without success, finally asked us to upload the file to him. Later he emailed that he was able to do this on his system). Without trim marks it is quite difficult to determine the bleed, trim, and back up position. We finally after hours of trying, decided to print 4-up on the Canon800 (with trim marks) then cutting to size and addressing on our Buskro. This is not what we had in mind as a professional print company. I personally tried again yesterday...no luck.

Thanks to EPICOMM for getting the word out and assistance. Our industry has had enough of the software problems that don't work. Staff becomes very sad, as does management with wasted hours with software that does not  meet it's obligation.

Sincerely,

We have been using PrintShop Mail for about 10 years.  It has been stable and not difficult to use.   A few years ago we tested Fusion and another program and decided that PrintShop Mail is the superior program.  We also use Windows 7.

Henry,

We have been using Printshop Mail since 2006. It was sold to us by Konica Minolta with our first C6500. When we were sold the package we were told it was MAC friendly, it is not.  I agree the software is clunky on PC's and the manual is difficult to understand.  When we paid for phone support other than the delay in getting a return call I found them helpful.  We still use Printshop mail for variable data text products with up to 5 or 6 fields varying within the body of text successfully.  If your trying to do variable text and images at the same time we found that to be extremely slow, we have done it but not at a profitable production rate.  We would break the jobs up into smaller qty's and co-mingle them in the mail trays later.

I will use the product for limited projects but am looking for other programs since the support renewal fee is equal to repurchasing the software.

The software never lived up to the sales pitch.

We have had other plug in's to indesign demonstrated for us but have not made the decision which to purchase.  We think the MAC platform would be a better to layout variable data jobs especially if images are varying.

Good Luck,

Pat Conway

Bravo Print & Mail