How to Evaluate any Vendor's PCL Conversion Tools:

1. Don't base your purchase decision on price alone.

Find a vendor that is the author of their product and has the ability to keep up with the latest developments in PCL and Windows Operating Systems. Be aware that there are several offshore vendors selling third-tier products that have no physical address or contact information on their websites. These vendors are private labeling someone else’s third-tier product, and are unable to keep the product up-to-date or make custom modifications.

Since 1993, PageTech has developed 100% of its software in-house without any outsourcing or offshore development. When you talk to PageTech, you are talking to the authors of their product with over 45 years. of combined experience in PCL print stream transformation, typeface conversion and other related PCL and imaging technologies.

2. Test the vendor early on in your evaluation process.

Get the vendor involved in a technical dialog as soon as possible. Provide a full description of your application, workflow, transformation, text extraction (for document splitting, naming, indexing, barcoding, etc.), page volume and other requirements. Include what you intend to do with the PDF after it's created. Sending a sample of your PCL (zipped) for analysis is also quite helpful. Invest your evaluation time with the actual PCL files that are going to be used for acceptance testing.

3. Don't be in a hurry to get out of PCL and into PDF.

The more you get done during the transformation process the less you have to do to meet all your application requirements. Tools like our SDK can add bookmarks, OMR/2-D and other barcodes, signatures, extract indexing data, etc. while we are creating the PDF.

4. Don't be in a hurry to write custom code with any vendor's API.

First, fully test the conversions of all variations of your PCL with the GUI tools provided. And then discuss your application requirements with the vendor before you invest any programming time. The vendor may be able to recommend a better way to meet all your requirements without you going through a big learning curve to write a custom application.

5. Do not waste your time with test files.

Every vendor provides files to show their level of PCL compatibility. Test files mean nothing. What does matter is can the vendor's product do the following with your PCL:

• Capture/redirect your PCL as input into a transformation program
• Provide converted files with searchable text
• Auto-index when converting
• Create a small file
• Do it quickly and for the right price
• Provide adequate technical support and product updates

6. Ask your end user if they have a "wish list" of what they would like to add to their print stream.

Question your end user about these features:

• Would you like to insert a boilerplate terms and conditions page behind the first page of every invoice?
• How about adding a logo, letterhead or signatures?
• Add OMR/2-D and other Barcodes?
• Insert Bookmarks in the PDF?
• Index key words in the "Keywords Section" of the PDF or in an external "rapid batch index file" for some 3rd party document archiving system?