RE: Our responsibilty with Inkjet Printing

["Michael Keller" <keller@wvinter.net>]

<x-charset iso-8859-1>|-----Original Message-----
|From: owner-epson-inkjet@leben.com
|[mailto:owner-epson-inkjet@leben.com]On Behalf Of Laurie Solomon
|
|
|What you say about migration to newer media and storage formats and
|technologies is true in principle and ideally; but it is not practical in
|all instances or for all users.  Some users (a) cannot afford the costs of
|either keeping up with technology on a timely manner (since they
|may be poor
|individuals and not either middle class professionals, employees of large
|established institutions and corporations, or large institutions and
|corporations themselves), (b) do not have the time, resources, or capacity
|to be constantly upgrading and migrating their old files to newer
|technologies as a large corporation or institution might especially if they
|have accumulated a significant number of files, or (c) have the bad luck to
|buy into the hardware or media upgrade cycle towards its end rather than at
|the beginning of it and cannot afford the money or time to make the change
|for the time being until a later date ( a couple of years later) if at all
|so as to effectively result in their not going back and retrieving
|old files
|for migration when they do get the newer hardware and storage media or do
|make the attempt but much later when the older hardware is no longer
|accessible or functional.
|

Anyone who is truly poor is not buying computer hardware/software, printers
or digital cameras. There is no one on this list that is truly poor.
Everything has a price: with film cameras, you can buy a cheap camera, even
a used camera, that will last a long time, but you pay to feed it film and
processing. With digital, the entry point is a higher price, but you save
money on the film end. NOBODY, not even large institutions (actually,
ESPECIALLY large institutions), buys into new technology at the beginning of
the curve. By the time you know that the new OS is stable, or the new
version of the s/w is bugfree (which you find out by hanging out on lists
like this), then you start the purchasing procedure, that product is out for
at least six months. Trust me, been there, done that.<g>

So you don't _constantly_ upgrade or migrate, new s/w upgrades are yearly
and you can usually get by with upping every two years, unless your
livelihood depends on it. The same goes for h/w, at work we are working on a
3-5 year plan. (folks who are h/w intensive, like me, will get new gear on a
3 year plan, but my h/w moves downstream to someone else. everyone gets
upped at least every five years) If you are up on the h/w and s/w (and if
these are your tools, you need to stay up on the industry, just as
photographers know what's going on in the photo industry), you _won't_ buy
into a system at the end of its useful life, although that may make for a
great bargain that can get you through a couple of years if you stay awake
during that time.

In the end, I think this all comes around to the theory (I work at a museum,
and people are always handing me this on the anti-digital agenda they have)
that the hardware to replay your material won't be around forever (computer
tapes, 8" disks, 5.25" disks, 2" video or audio tape, yadda yadda), so what
happens when your CDs aren't playable? Now here is the answer I give:

This is MY work (and those who preceded me), and it's MY responsibility, and
I will make sure that it is accessible. I care more about this work than
anyone else, so I have a vested interest in making sure that the images are
upgraded from CD to DVD to whatever. Just as I make sure that the negs and
slides are filed in archival sleeves, and kept in their proper files. YOU
(meaning the archivists) may not give a damn about this stuff, but I do. YOU
(archivists) only want the safe, easy, and time-tested method (sorta;
remember nitrate films? got any glass negatives?), but part of that is
laziness on your part. (it's easy to keep doing things the same old way) And
as I indicated in an earlier post, it's actually EASIER to catalog digital
work on CD (using ImageAXS or Extensis Portfolio or whatever) as you burn
the CD, than it is to catalog analog material. So you create a workflow that
works for you.

That's my rant, sorry for the bandwidth.<g> I can play both sides of the
fence, however, you should see me rip the people that say "film is dead." I
just say "the right tool for the right job, and quit throwing up barriers
that can't be overcome."

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