Anyone ripping with Flexi on Mac

[Leadbelly]

Hi guys, sick and tired with windows and being a bit of a technophobe is'nt helping. At present using flexi sign and ripping on versa works ( PC ) I want to go with new Mac and Flexi sign pro again for the Mac, are any of you guys using stand alone Mac and ripping with Flexi. Can you advise me if this might be the right direction to take and if so will Flexi sign pro 8.5 be ok.

Leadbelly

 

[steve.leleaux]

I switched to Flexi8.5 for mac, there are a few features i miss but once i got used the the small changes I guess it's ok. you can open older versions of PC .fs files but if you try to reopen back on a PC you're screwed, you will have to export out as an older version like 7.5 to be able to reopen but then your fonts won't convert. Also it does crash without warning sometimes up to 5 or 6 times a day. we haven't been able to figure out any sort of consistency behind it either. Although there is a spell check feature it doesn't work most of the time. Flexi 8.5 for mac is however a lot more compatible with .ai files than any of the PC versions ive used 7, 7.5 and 8.5, you don't have to save as .eps. if you're still thinking about switching look into flexi10.

 

[Stephenedwardgraphic]

Running Flexi 8.6 on an Intel Mac. Absolutely HATE IT. Damn thing crashes all of the time. Whenever running banners or larger projects everything will be going okay and then all of a sudden bombs out with a kernal panic. Start over and what ever was printed was junk. Wish I would've bought something else for the RIP.

 

[njshorts]

heard from a rep at SW (so take it for what it's worth) that Flexi 10 update should be available for OSX-intel within 5 months.

 

[MrG]

I've just installed Flexi-8 with update on a new Intel iMAC running Snow Leopard. It basicly works ok but screen updating seems a bit sluggish. Is this program Intel native, or is it running under Apple's "Rosetta emulator." I hope they come out with version 10 for Mac soon, which might speed it up. What happened to version 9? I used to use Roland's old SignMate on Mac OS9., and it ran much faster! And for the record, Flexi-8.5 loads all of my old SignMate files just fine!

 

[John Butto]

MacBook Pro

I have Flexi on a laptop that just is for my printers and since it is old version that will not work with the newer OS 10.6, I partitioned my hard drive with an older OS (10.5) which runs Flexi and only use for photographs because of the profiles for the paper used. The other part of the partition which has the newest 10.6.7 has Shiraz RIP and it is far superior that Flexi with colors and ease of use. Shiraz is based in England so you might be better off since their support for the Mac is more knowledgeable. You can download a trial at www.shiraz-software.com

 

["Deposit Please"]

Flexi 8.5 for mac sucks. Crashes all the time. Nothing SAI can do about it. Sent many fullcrash reports through textedit to their so called "Engineers" at sai with no solution. Yes, i'm bitter, i spent alot of $$$ for this software and all i do is relaunch, clear preferences and save every 30 seconds. I see that i'm not the only one. SAI need not worry about making flexi more powerful at bitmap editing because they are too many light-years behind photoshop & corel, not even in the same galaxy. They should focus on stabilizing flexi for the mac, and then, move forward from there. .....had to vent, I feel better now

 

[John Butto]

"crashes"

Flexi 8.5 for mac sucks. Crashes all the time. Nothing SAI can do about it. Sent many fullcrash reports through textedit to their so called "Engineers" at sai with no solution. Yes, i'm bitter, i spent alot of $$$ for this software and all i do is relaunch, clear preferences and save every 30 seconds. I see that i'm not the only one. SAI need not worry about making flexi more powerful at bitmap editing because they are too many light-years behind photoshop & corel, not even in the same galaxy. They should focus on stabilizing flexi for the mac, and then, move forward from there. .....had to vent, I feel better now

Have been working on Macs since the MacPlus and never had problems with that word "crashes" which is the war song of a PC user. Download OnyX, which is free, and run it before and after you download software and should have no problems. With the Mac you can even find out where panics come from and write a script to solve most problems because of the UNIX base OS.

 

[Mainframe]

Deposit, just a thought, why don't you contact SAI & offer to beta test the newest Mac rip, then you can see how it works & have a hand in it's quality?

 

[steve.leleaux]

I called and called and called sai and finally talked to a tech guy about the spell check feature not working, I emailed him screen shots of a bunch of gibberish and some groups of gibberish were underlined in red and some weren't. Long story short, he called me back in just a couple days with a file from the engineers and now spell check works like it should. I was surprised by the quick response. On the other hand I have pretty much given up on the crashing, like Deposit Please said, just save every 30 seconds. I recently started drawing everything in illy and opening in flexi for ripping.

 

["Deposit Please"]

Ummm...not sure if you read the other posts before me, but seems like most everyone is having the same issues with the mac version of flexi crashing. It doesn't just crash when it rips, it crashes all the time. I do have the latest and gravest version of flexi. It is what it is ...and i'm sure i don't need to spell it. I'm Just hoping when v10 for mac comes out, the issues will be resolved.

 

[Mainframe]

UMMM.. I did read the posts, I see you guys are having trouble, what I am trying to tell you is if you contact SAI & offer to beta test the newest version, (this would be v10) they would (might) send you the download link & a dongle for version 10 beta, this puts version 10 on your Mac right away, you no longer need to use 8.xxx.. you then can report all problems to them directly, therefore, when & if you get 10 to the point where it doesn't give problems, they release it, a Mac user in the field such as you would be a dream tester for the company, you are using the software constantly & can report all errors etc to help them get the bugs out, I beta tested 8.5 on a Mac with 10.5 loaded, it ran pretty well but I mostly just used it to cut files so I didn't give them a lot of feedback & have lost my contact with the company,(he is no longer with them)
A beta tester is usually a volunteer who tests the software for no charge, they did give someone who gave the most feedback a full version of Flexi Pro so it was well worth someones time. I contacted them about testing & had the software & dongle in a matter of days, they were pretty professional about the whole deal & the dongle just runs out in 90 days or so. I was very impressed with the whole deal. I had version 7 that wouldn't even launch so after we were all done testing I just bought Flexi starter & it still works ok for me, but I too will get 10 when it comes out.

 

["Deposit Please"]

let me get this...leave unstable v8.6 and test v10 for SAI?

 

[WildWestDesigns]

UMMM.. I did read the posts, I see you guys are having trouble, what I am trying to tell you is if you contact SAI & offer to beta test the newest version, (this would be v10) they would (might) send you the download link & a dongle for version 10 beta, this puts version 10 on your Mac right away, you no longer need to use 8.xxx.. you then can report all problems to them directly, therefore, when & if you get 10 to the point where it doesn't give problems, they release it, a Mac user in the field such as you would be a dream tester for the company, you are using the software constantly & can report all errors etc to help them get the bugs out, I beta tested 8.5 on a Mac with 10.5 loaded, it ran pretty well but I mostly just used it to cut files so I didn't give them a lot of feedback & have lost my contact with the company,(he is no longer with them)
A beta tester is usually a volunteer who tests the software for no charge, they did give someone who gave the most feedback a full version of Flexi Pro so it was well worth someones time. I contacted them about testing & had the software & dongle in a matter of days, they were pretty professional about the whole deal & the dongle just runs out in 90 days or so. I was very impressed with the whole deal. I had version 7 that wouldn't even launch so after we were all done testing I just bought Flexi starter & it still works ok for me, but I too will get 10 when it comes out.

Good idea, but there could be drawbacks to beta testing. I did some beta testing for vehicle programming, as well as an embroidery program and you do become someone's lab rat. It may be no big deal or it can be that you have issues so much that they keep you from going on about your business as usual.

I'm not saying that that will be the case, but there are risks associated with beta testing.

Now with established software, I kinda doubt any horrific issues, but you just never know especially if they are trying to come out with some really neat new feature. However, if there are constant crashes, it might just be worth it to try to beta, I can't imagine the new software being any worse.