>we are thinking about getting a fuji pictography 3000 which was highly
>regarded by the list back in december.  Specific questions to owners are:

>is maintenance problematic?

1: Pictography uses water to develop pictures; you have to change the water
in the storage bottle once per week. (The printer beeps to notify you.)

2: The water filter must be changed every few months.

3: Every time you change the donor and paper cartridge, you have to
calibrate the machine using the attached automatic calibrator in order to
get consistent colour. Though you can skip this process, you may suffer
slightly inconsistent colour (or tone of the grey) in this case.

Thus, the maintenance is a bit more cumbersome than with dye-sub printers.
But please bare in mind that most dye-sub printers has no such calibrating
function at all.

>How good are the B&W prints when compared to film?

Almost as good. But, again, the tone of grey (bluish of brownish) may vary
significantly, if you don't calibrate the printer when you change the
donor/paper cartridges.

>How much do the individual prints cost (real cost that is, allowing
>for wasted pics etc)?

An A4 picture costs ca. two dollars. The amount of wasted pics depends on
how carefully you calibrate your printer as well as your CRT monitor.

>How does it perform across a network?

When you use the PS Controller, it works just as any other postscript
printers. Without PS Controller, the network capability is almost none. You
can use the printer only from the local machine.

Hope this helps,