New Zealand Operations Level 3
123 Carlton Gore Road
Newmarket
Auckland, NZ
Phone: +64 (9) 523-0700

Welcome to the Pharos Systems Newsletter. Our goal is to keep you informed on new product releases, product updates, Hot Fixes...and more.

Pharos Uniprint 7.0 and Service Packs
Uniprint 7.0 includes several new features and tools catering to the mobile user community. To facilitate printer identification and management, mobile users can now select an appropriate printer from a Uniprint 7.0 website and click on it to configure their laptop for printing to local or remote devices, and even to a print center.

Uniprint 7.0 Service Pack 1 enables users to upgrade the Popup Client either via the Pharos Component Distribution System or via install packages.

Currently, the Pharos External Device Interface (EDI) utilizes the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit, which Microsoft is phasing out. Therefore, Pharos is porting the EDI to Microsoft .NET, which will offer greater stability and ease of installation particularly on Windows XP and Windows 2003 platforms. Uniprint 7.0 Service Pack 2, currently in development, will include the new Pharos EDI.

Release of Blueprint Enterprise 3.1 Sept 2005
Pharos has released Blueprint Enterprise 3.1. Combining device meter read data with user print transaction data, Blueprint Enterprise tracks print jobs in order to calculate costs based on actual usage. As a result, organizations achieve a cost-per-page accounting of all users and output devices across the enterprise. Pharos Blueprint Enterprise illuminates your printing environment so you will finally know what you are spending on every printed and copied page. Once you can accurately measure your total enterprise output costs, you can manage and significantly reduce those costs by 30% or more.

Microsoft Software Company of the Year Award for 2005 in New Zealand
Pharos Systems wins the prestigious Microsoft Software Company of the Year Award at the 2005 Allied Telesyn New Zealand Hi Tech Awards. The award ceremony was held in Christchurch, New Zealand 1 October. As a previous runner-up for this award in 2003, Pharos was thrilled to win the award this year. Writing about the sponsorship of this award category, Ross Peat, Managing Director, Microsoft New Zealand, states, "….we are pleased to be able to recognise and celebrate the success of New Zealand businesses that develop innovative, world-class solutions to meet the ever-increasing demands for a more mobile and connected world."

The purpose of the awards is to promote excellence and recognize achievement among New Zealand electronic, software, and biotechnology companies.

Pharos 7.0 Hot Fix 1
When the 7.0 Popup Client is installed on a client PC, a copy of the spool file each print job creates is temporarily stored in the Pharos\Temp folder, and the client removes the file once the print job is handled. However, for any jobs sent to printers that did not have the client installed, a copy of the spool file was also retained, but the client was not deleting the spool file. This problem had the potential to cause accumulation of many spool files on PCs if multiple jobs were sent to printers that did not have the client installed.

The application of this Hot Fix ensures that no spool file copies are retained after print jobs are handled on both printers with the Popup Client installed and those without. IT staff should manually delete existing copies of old spool files in the Pharos\Temp folder.

Pharos Version 6.1 Hot Fix 30
When using Pharos Stations with BEAR PODs to control copying, users could obtain free copies by using Task Manager to terminate the Pharos Station process or by powering off the Pharos Station. IT staff should lock down the Pharos Station so users cannot tamper with it. However, this Hot Fix ensures that even if users shut down the Pharos Station, all copying charges are attributed to the user once the BEAR POD and Pharos Station are re-enabled.

This Hot Fix also addresses problems with Pharos Stations and the Jamex coin reader, where users were sometimes prompted to "Insert Card" if they didn't have sufficient funds to release a print job. This Hot Fix changes the message to "Insufficient funds to continue print job."

PS20 firmware: Version 16
Pharos has just released updated firmware for the PS20 terminal, which addresses a number of issues, including improving stability on slow networks.

Previously, in slow environments, the PS20 terminal could get stuck in a loop if server notifications did not arrive back to the PS20 in time, or if a print job was removed from the queue at a critical time, or if there were no suitable printers available. All these cases are now handled gracefully with appropriate error messages as needed.

Omega firmware: Pencarrow 2
Pencarrow 2, the latest firmware for the Pharos Omega device, incorporates new features and improvements for product stability.

Pencarrow 2 makes it easy to customize the Omega device with themes. Previously, with every new release of firmware, customers with custom themes had to receive new .thss files from Pharos. With the release of Pencarrow 2, customers have all the tools they need to change the Omega device theme to reflect their company branding, meet customer needs, or just show their creativity.

The Omega Administrator is an easy-to-use theme-editing tool that allows a user to edit all of the images and text prompts that appear on the Omega SmartPAD. There is no need to create a new theme for every new release of firmware, so all custom themes users create are now firmware version-independent.

Furthermore, using Omega Administrator, users can now extract a theme from an Omega SmartHub, edit it, and push it back to one or more Omega devices.

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