Print '97: Once in six-year event

If you missed Print '97, wait until 2003

So large it can only be hosted once every six years, the electronic publishing, printing and graphics industries' biggest event descended on Chicago's McCormick Place the first week of September. Spread across nearly 900,000 square feet of exhibitor space, Print '97 offered a huge variety of solutions for digital distribution. Hundreds of exhibitors displayed new products, formed alliances and presented educational seminars. With more than 100,000 attendees and 1,000 exhibitors, Print '97 was the place to be for digital publishing and printing solutions.

Below is a list of some of the exhibiting companies that caught IW's eye:

• Apple (Cupertino, CA, http://www.apple.com), Xerox (Rochester, NY, http://www.xerox.com) and Splash (Sunnyvale, CA, http://www.splashtech.com) announced the Profiling Excellence with ColorSync educational program, designed to showcase color publishing benefits using technology from the three companies. Apple also announced the acquisition of Power Computing (Round Rock, TX, http://www.powercc.com) for $100 million in Apple common stock, which will add marketing and engineering expertise for the Mac OS operating system.

• ECRM (Tewksbury, MA, http://www.ecrm.com) and Adobe (San Jose, CA, http://www.adobe.com) announced an agreement to co-develop printing solutions based on Adobe's PostScript 3 Raster Image Processor and ECRM imagesetters.

• DataVation (North York, Ontario, http://www.datavation.com) displayed its DataVast hierarchical, scalable mass storage server that offers up to a 1,500-GB capacity for 12-mm tape devices or 24-GB online storage in cache.

• Kodak (Rochester, NY, http://www.kodak.com) showcased numerous computer-to-plate, digital proofing and image conversion products, and announced an alliance with print industry giant Heidelberg (Kennesaw, GA, http://www.heidelberg.com) to develop and market digital color printing solutions.

• Scantronix (Hawthorne, CA) displayed Paris-based Eurocore's (http://www.eurocore.com) HiScan A4 drum scanner, offering maximum optical density of 10,000 dpi and an optical resolution of 4.5. Likewise, Screen USA (Rolling Hills, IL, http://www.screenusa.com) unveiled the Cezanne 48-bit large format flatbed scanner with 5,300-dpi optical resolution, a three-line CCD and an optical density of 3.9.

• UMAX (Fremont, CA, http://www.umax.com) debuted the Powerlook III and Powerlook 3000 high-end scanners, featuring UMAX's Bit Enhancement Technology, an optical density of 3.6 and near-drum scanner quality.

• Wam!Net (Minneapolis, MN, http://www.wamnet.com) displayed its digital delivery network, a "digital courier" system that transfers digital files across the country with guaranteed delivery. Wam!Net also distributed purple tennis shoes to crowds of interested attendees.

• Imation (Oakdale, MN, http://www.imation.com) signed an agreement with AT&T (Basking Ridge, NJ, http://www.att.com) for ISDN integration services; Xerox announced a similar agreement with 4-Sight (Woburn, MA, http://www.4sight.com).

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