So far i’m very happy with the vast amount of money i’ve invested in my new toys. I’m still making friends with both the Nikon D300 and the HP Z3100ps but i’ve not, so far, hit any roadblocks that have inspired buyer’s remorse.

Extensive web searches have yielded little in terms of “secret handshake” stuff regarding the Z3100 printer. Many people are lamenting the poor quality of HP software and the abysmal state of HP customer support for the printer, but nobody is calling for a class-action suit. I’m used to industrial companies like HP making clunky software for the Mac. I love the bit on the HP site where you search for drivers. You click on “obtain software” for Mac 10.5 and you’re redirected to a PDF that is served up from an HP site with “austin” (Texas?) in the URL. The PDF says “if you’re using the ‘ps’ version of the Z3100,” meaning if you spent an extra $1,000, “we’ll have driver software for you sometime in the spring of 2008.”

HP’s hardware must be great since their software is bush-league and their support is laugh-out-loud weak.

Yet, for my part I’m ok with the software oddities since, despite the bogus warning messages, i’ve got a setup that seems to be working with a certain degree of predictability. I am very pleased with Moab’s Colorado Fiber Gloss paper especially for black and white output. The resulting tonal scale, the Dmax and the “F Surface” texture all bring me back to when i was printing on Ilford’s Galerie paper.

This all leads me to state with a high degree of certainty – I can print your work. And what’s better, you’ll be pleased with the results.