Acorn Adds Full-Colour Poster Printing to its Pre-Press Portfolio

Cambridge, UK. 14 March, 1995

Acorn Computer's Professional Sales Division has added a colour poster printer to its range of pre-press products. Following an agreement with Colourgen Distribution, which has the UK distribution rights, Acorn is also marketing the NovaJET III large-format inkjet printer.

Manufactured in the USA by Encad Inc, the NovaJET III was introduced in the UK approximately six months ago and is equipped with many features not available with the first two models. The NovaJET III has taken inkjet technology a step further and the latest version provides greater colour enhancement, a choice of printing options, increased ease of use and improved performance when printing in the colour mode.

Acorn has combined its RISC PC-based Publishing System with the NovaJET III to provide the Acorn Poster Publisher, a complete poster creation and printing system.

"This enables Acorn to offer a true design to print poster printing system for under 11,000", says Simon Woodward, Acorn's Professional Publishing Manager.

"Many companies offer a disk-to-print solution. The Acorn Publishing System has all the graphics capability required to create the most sophisticated images from scratch, directly scanned images or digital images supplied via disk or modem in standard file formats."

The system will be targeted at large retailers, corporate publishers, quick printers, commercial printers and, in addition to marketing the complete solution, the company will offer individual printers to existing Acorn users. The company has specifically developed one of its standard RISC PC printer drivers to increase the speed and enhance the colour calibration for the NovaJET III.

"Initial tests with RISC PC have shown significant improvements in both speed and quality compared to the results achieved when the NovaJET is driven by a Mac or PC", comments Mike Hardcastle, Colourgen's Marketing Director.

"To give an example of the speed, the NovaJET can produce an A1-format, photographic quality poster in approximately 20 minutes."

The NovaJET uses standard CMYK inks and operates at 300 x 300 dpi to produce fine lines and brilliant colours. Featuring a range of quality settings, the printer is suitable for producing everything from simple text and line art to colour proofs, graphic design visuals as well as short-run, full-colour posters up to A0.

Users producing colourful images - such as posters, signs and point-of-sale material - will benefit most from the highest quality enhanced colour printing mode which utilises the whole colour spectrum to create photographic quality images. This new variable option enable users to choose between speed and print quality depending upon the application.

The NovaJET also features a refined user interface with liquid crystal display which gives users more information about their printing tasks and greater control. The control system also gives valuable information such as print status, ink levels and material remaining.

The world's first low-cost, wide-format colour inkjet printer, the original NovaJET, was introduced in 1991 and the NovaJET II, with enhanced photographic quality colour, was launched in 1993. The Acorn Poster Publisher, comprising an Acorn RISC PC and a NovaJET III printer, is available immediately from Acorn's Professional Sales Division and Colourgen.

Founded in 1978, with 1994 revenues in excess of £50m, Acorn Computers is a leading provider of IT to UK education and was the first supplier of low-cost 32-bit RISC based personal computers in 1987. Acorn works closely with a strong community of industry partners, users and software developers to provide innovative technology solutions for the education, consumer, publishing and international markets.

Acorn Computer Group plc is the holding company for Acorn Computers Limited, Acorn Australia, Acorn New Zealand, Acorn GmbH and Online Media. Acorn Computer Group owns 43% of Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. Online Media, a division of the Acorn Computer Group, was launched in 1994 with the objective to design interactive multimedia products.


© 1995 Acorn Computer Group plc.
Design: © 1995 Cave Rock Software Ltd.