Month: May 2021

In with the new

After 13 years of sterling service I have replaced my old Epson 3800 A2 printer with its modern equivalent: an Epson SC-P900.

This allows me to make exhibition grade prints for clients as well as being a proofing station for my CMYK repro work. The new printer uses 10 inks and has a larger colour gamut than the old printer and indeed it is possible to see a visible improvement in the prints.

A new set of ink cartridges run to approx. £400 but quality never comes at a bargain price. By investing in the new printer I hope I can  continue to offer clients the best possible results.

Next up is to fire up the X-Rite spectrophotometer and build some custom colour profiles to ensure the best possible colour accuracy.

If anyone fancies a trip to Sheringham the old printer is available for pickup at no cost (free!), it just needs new ink and patience with its loading mechanism….

Client Advisory: OSX Big Sur problem connecting to QNAP NAS using IP over thunderbolt

Apple occasionally break a few things with their operating system updates and it has come to pass that the latest version of OSX: Big Sur 10.3 does this for IP over thunderbolt.

If your fast connection between your Mac and your QNAP NAS has suddenly stopped working then this is why.

I run IP thunderbolt to my QNAP NAS as this gives me 900mb/sec connectivity for reading and writing files (far faster than mechanical drives or sata based SSD). Looks like I will need to run this at 100mb/sec via gigabit ethernet till they sort the issue. If you have the same problem then you can downgrade using time machine or wait for the fix.

The vast majority of the work I do is Windows PC based and my 10GB connectivity still works fine to deliver the 900mb/sec.

Update: 03.05.2021 19:58
Big Sur 10.3.1 is a security update and does not fix the issue with IP over thunderbolt. Lets see what 10.3.2 can do when ever it comes out.

Update: 17.05.2021
I have joined the Mac OS beta program and downloaded the third Beta of 10.4, this has fixed the Thunderbolt issues when connecting to my QNAP.  Not generally a good idea to run Beta OS but was advised this was stable and it does seem to work fine.