EFI Lets Graphic Designers And Corporate Professionals Realize Creative Vision Faster FOSTER CITY, CA--Sep 30, 2002 -- Electronics for Imaging today announced groundbreaking network printing performance results using EFI's high-end Fiery print servers and IBM's new high-performance Deskstar 180GXP hard drives in a RAID configuration. The accelerated print server performance significantly improves efficiency by increasing job flexibility and speed in producing high-quality print output for a variety of users, including professional graphic service providers, print-for-pay shops, in-house graphics departments and advertising agencies. EFI plans to incorporate the new Deskstar hard drive into all their print server product lines. EFI's Fiery print server technology drives high output print engines, requiring the highest quality components to meet the performance needs of demanding printing professionals. The quantity of images and files that a Fiery print server can spool and queue for printing is limited only by the capacity of the hard disk drive, and the speed at which those images can be moved is impacted by hard drive performance. IBM's Deskstar 180GXP offers companies like EFI 50-percent more hard-drive capacity and up to a 20-percent performance improvement. The efficiency of EFI's Fiery print server is significantly enhanced by the Deskstar's higher data transfer rate and boot time, which enable the server to access more information in less time. "EFI's Fiery technology is industry renowned for being the world's fastest imaging and printing servers on the market," said Roy Shay, senior director of Production Systems, EFI. "The IBM Deskstar hard drive is an important component which helps EFI increase the speed of the overall system. This enables us to deliver quality products to drive high-end print engines in intensive production environments." EFI tests the top hard drives from all major manufacturers on a regular basis and has been implementing high-performance, high-capacity IBM Deskstar hard drives in its Fiery print servers for several generations. EFI products currently on the market, which include the latest Fiery Z5 and Z18 servers, are shipping with IBM's 40/60 GB Deskstar 60GXP and 40/80 GB 120GXP and are primarily used for corporate mid/high-end networked black and white and color printers and for the pre-press market. The IBM Deskstar was selected for its consistent high performance, cost-effectiveness, quality, reliability, warranty conditions, technical support responsiveness and product road map alignment. To date, EFI has shipped about 15,000 Deskstar drives. "Hard drive performance has a significant impact on business-critical network printing applications," said Robert Holleran, business line executive for Deskstar products, IBM. "The new Deskstar 180GXP has a performance advantage of up to 20-percent over competing hard drives and, used with the Fiery print server, significantly increases the speed at which end-users are able to develop their graphic-rich content."