Last week's column highlighted 8 ways in which consumers can work better with their printers. I received a lot of good feedback on it: thank you all!

I also heard from several printers around the country who corrected the following comment: "The platform of choice among printers is still the Mac. Programs like Word and Publisher were not created for output on a commercial press."

"This may be true of some printers," wrote Roy Nix of Nix On Time Printing (check out www.prntix.com for a breadth of information), but not as much as a year ago and getting less and less as days go by. Most good shops today will take both platforms and never indicate which they prefer. Any printer who uses Macs exclusively is in danger of losing market share each day."

He's right. I over-generalized. While graphic designers and other print professionals might still prefer Macs - even turn their noses up at PC programs - more businesses are buying PCs than Macs, and printers are becoming more "ambidextrous," shall we say?

The topic of PCs vs. Macs always comes up when I'm interviewing printers. Little by little the tides are changing, and though the majority of printers have said that they work with Mac files as a rule, PC files have to be dealt with (and printed from).

A printer from California echoed Roy's comments. "Most printers I know support both platforms and many prefer PC. We're primarily a PC shop because our clients are businesses, and businesses run PCs."

In last month's Quick Printing magazine (www.quickprinting.com), columnist John Giles wrote about Publisher 2002, and how this new version has greatly expanded its commercial printing features. "With millions of users, Publisher is becoming a force in the quick printing marketplace," he writes. In fact, Microsoft offers free software and support to printers and service bureaus who want to support this software. (Details are available at www.microsoft.com/publisher/pspp/.)

"I have watched the transition from anti-Publisher to becoming Publisher providers," noted Harry Silvis of Kennesaw Graphics in Georgia. "These printers have realized that many customers are not going to purchase Quark or PageMaker and that they needed to be able to deal with Publisher." He also said that Word has been a very profitable program for his shop.

I don't think that Word and Publisher files are always easy to work with. It certainly depends on the creator and the printer. (You could say the same thing about Mac programs, too.) But it's an ongoing issue and I'm happy to stand corrected.

The times they certainly are a changing.