ColorAge announces major enhancements to industry's broadest line of digital color print servers.

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 28, 1995--In conjunction with this week's Seybold Seminar, ColorAge Inc., demonstrated dramatic new features for all three models of the ColorQ Series of digital color print servers.

The ColorQ family is the broadest line of digital color print servers in the industry, and the first to address both large corporations and small businesses, in addition to the traditional high-end graphics/reproduction market.

The new enhancements cut prices, improve performance, and add more networking options, including an important corporate standard, TCP/IP. The highlight of the demonstration at the ColorAge Technology Suite is DiamondPress Compression on the ColorQ 4000. ColorAge is the first company to apply advanced lossless and adaptive compression to digital color print servers, achieving much higher compression levels with absolutely no loss of image quality. The ColorQ 4000 is the only digital color printer server with a multiprocessor, multi-RIP architecture. With this processing power and the new DiamondPress technology, the ColorQ 4000 can drive two copiers at rated speed with significant throughput improvements.

This is the second major release of new capabilities for the ColorQ family in less than a year. ColarAge is the only major vendor to adopt an open systems strategy and establish relationships with development partners like Microsoft and Intel for system platform components. These partnerships have enabled ColorAge to take advantage of rapidly declining prices, performance improvements such as the powerful 90 MHz Pentium processor, and more robust networking features.

The ColorQ Series attach color copiers from Canon and Xerox to customer networks, delivering high-quality color printing from the desktop. The ColorQ 4000 addresses the high throughput requirements of "print-for-profit" businesses. The ColorQ 2000 is specifically designed for heterogeneous corporate network environments. The ColorQ 1000 is designed for small businesses and other first time users.

ColorQ 4000 Version 1.1

The ColorQ 4000 Version 1.1 introduces a technology breakthrough called DiamondPress compression. There are two key distinctions between DiamondPress compression and prevailing compression approaches: "lossless" compression techniques and adaptive compression.

"Lossless" compression stores and reconstructs an image at full color quality. For example, in Canon and Xerox copiers this would be 8 bits per color plane and 400 dpi resolution. EFI's memory multiplier technology is an example of one of the many systems today that use conventional "lossy" compression. Lossy compression stores half as much information during the compression-decompression cycle, which means it loses information about the original image.

DiamondPress also employs an adaptive algorithm that dynamically optimizes compression according to the contents of the page. This results in much tighter compression levels than today's digital color print servers deliver. For example, on a typical four-color newsletter with complex graphics, DiamondPress will achieve 5-10x compression compared to 2x compression from competitive solutions.

Compression and memory management are the key to throughput, and therefore to productivity in printing. Used in conjunction with ColorAge's PageStack memory management DiamondPress allows more pages to pre-imaged into memory, which means the ColorQ 4000 delivers the best throughput on the market.

This greatly improved compression and memory management technology also lays the foundation for future document printing capabilities, such as electronic collation and just-in-time personalized printing.

The ColorQ 4000 Version 1.1, with dual 90 Mhz Pentium processors and independent RIPs, also provides more processing power to support dual copiers. With enormous processing power and DiamondPress compression, customers can print full-quality tabloid pages (different originals) on two copiers simultaneously, even in an entry-level 128 MB memory configuration, or apply more processing power to a single copier.

ColorQ 2000 Version 1.1

ColorQ 2000 Version 1.1 is based on the newest Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.5 operating system. Version 1.1 adds native Novell and TCP/IP support. This expanded networking support is key to the requirements of heterogeneous corporate networks. Version 1.1 also adds local reprint and media server capabilities, a job accounting facility, and client control of job printing options previously available only at the server. The new 90 MHz Pentium processor and streamlined software implementation improves performance by 50-100 percent over version 1.0, at a lower cost.

The new ColorQ 2000 is being showcased at Pantone's Booth #2328 at Seybold Seminars Boston Exhibition.

ColorQ 1000 Version 1.1

The ColorQ 1000 Version 1.1 adds native support of Microsoft networks with the NetBEUI protocol. The ColorQ 1000 already supports Appletalk and novell protocols. The new 90 MHz Pentium processor and streamlined software implementation improves performance by an average of 50 percent over version 1.0, at a lower cost.

Pricing and Availability

ColorQ 1000 Version 1.1 and ColorQ 2000 Version 1.1 are available immediately. ColorQ 4000 Version 1.1 will begin shipping in May 1995.

The ColorQ 1000 is priced starting at $17,000 (U.S. list) with 32 MB imaging memory. An upgrade kit from 1.0 to 1.1 is $4,000. The ColorQ 2000 is priced at $35,000 (U.S. list) with 128 MB imaging memory and operator's console. An upgrade kit from 1.0 to 1.1 is $4,000. The ColorQ 4000 with 128 MB memory and single copier support is $40,000 (U.S. list). A second copier attachment costs $10,000 (U.S. list). Options for additional memory, increased disk size, a larger-screen console, and SpotMatch (certified PANTONE Color matching) software are priced separately.

In addition to upgrade options between versions, customers can also upgrade from one model to another. For example, customers can upgrade from version 1.0 of the ColorQ 2000 to version 1.1 of the ColorQ 4000 starting at $15,000 (U.S. list), depending on memory.

ColorAge Inc., a privately held company headquartered in Billerica, Mass., is a leading developer of network-based digital color print servers. Since the introduction of the first ColorQ System in 1992, the company has developed one of the broadest product lines available with digital color print servers designed for the corporate marketplace, production environments, and small businesses.

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ColorQ, DiamondPress, PageStack, ColorVantage, and SpotMatch are trademarks of ColorAge Inc. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective holders. All trademarks may be registered in the United States and certain other jurisdictions.

CONTACT: ColorAge Inc.

John Scanlon, 508/667-8585