KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience

[John Kaufmann]

What is this? Can anyone help me divine what it is supposed to be or do?

Apparently it installs automatically on Windows machines when the Universal Print Driver (UPD) is installed for a KM MFP. I did not notice that at first, then began to notice an interesting pattern when a UPD driver was installed for a machine: the print preferences for all other MFPs installed with UPD driver would revert to the same apparent default settings installed for the new machine. So rather than having a prior standard setup on other machines to guide the new setup, all of them have to be fixed, along with the new MFP. It could hardly be more perverse -- especially as there is no apparent way to change the default settings applied by the UPD installation.

When I was troubleshooting that behavior I found the "KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience" app, noticed that it installs with the UPD, and (suspecting a connection with the perverse behavior) wondered why it was there. I searched "KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience" on the KMBS sites and came up empty.

1. Then I tried to login to my MyKMBS account to ask support about it, and was told that my login was not valid. [Admittedly, I have not used it for a few years.]
2. Then I tried email to mykmbs@kmbs.konicaminolta.us, which used to provide email support for mykmbs, and it bounced Undeliverable (550 = does not exist).
3. Then I tried calling someone who was in MyKMBS support. Her number no longer takes calls, and she is no longer in the KM directory.

So MyKMBS, along with the support it used to offer (which was never great) appears to be dead.

Meanwhile (thanks to Google, not KMBS), I found the UPD System Administrator's Guide, a 90-page doc (in either PDF or DOCX) that mentions "KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience" exactly five times: 2x"Installation", 1x"Uninstallation", 2x"Start Experience UI" (which says almost nothing about it - and what it does say does not happen).

There is also a silly 2-minute video on various streaming services titled "KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience" which likewise says nothing about it, has almost no views and 0 comments. (The video is mind-numbingly stupid.)

There are also various download sites for the app, like the Microsoft Store, where it is almost never downloaded intentionally, has a grand total 17 ratings averaging just over 1 on the 1~5 scale (inexplicably, someone gave it a 2), and has exactly 3 reviews, all saying it's useless (which is my experience - except maybe it's worse than useless).

Here is what is looks like in "action":
KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience scrnshot.jpg
That little menu hamburger in the upper left corner has exactly two choices,
"Share":
KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience scrn-Share.jpg
and Settings:
KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience scrn-Settings.jpg
IOW, just as the reviews say, no part of the KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience app seems to do anything.

Sorry for the long post, but this is so obscure that I figured I should lay out whatever I knew. If you've read this far, thanks.

Conclusion: I know CTN is for hardware, not sysadmin, problems, but some KM experts may be familiar with what's going on here (and what's going on with KMBS, who surely must be embarrassed by this). [I'm back to thinking about that thread from a few months back, wondering whether KM is going out of business.] Does anyone know?

[rrrohan]

Re: KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience

KM should just give up on the universal print driver.

I have used it over the last decade here and there and I have always regretted it and ended up removing it and putting the model specific ones on.

[femaster]

Re: KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience

I've never paid any attention to it, but did also find the "Print Experience" application in the start menu on my PC. Since we test and set up any number of different models in the office, we use the Universal driver on our PCs in the service department instead of having a ton of different drivers installed.

When opening up that app on my PC, there is nothing in the settings section at all, but I do have one entry on the main page. It almost seems like maybe it is only applicable to really old models of machines. We still have an antique C20p that we use for internal prints (until we run out of spare parts and toners for it), and that is the only machine that shows up in the app out of the 8 we currently have on the network.

Print Experience.jpg

[John Kaufmann]

Re: KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience

KM should just give up on the universal print driver. I have used it over the last decade here and there and I have always regretted it and ended up removing it and putting the model specific ones on.

Thanks. I started using the UPD with 8-series installations, when the model-specific drivers (v.11.2.0) were having display problems on Windows 10. For a few years (2015~19?), there were a number of CTN threads on this problem and on model-specific drivers not seeing the finisher functions. From those threads I concluded that the best alternative was the Universal drivers, which were not having the W10 display problem.

The last time I used KMBS support, in November 2019, was about driver problems. I emailed, got no reply, so finally called, and spoke with two people (for whom I only got first names). According to my notes, the more informative was Jason, in the "Connectivity department". He did not know much about the Universal drivers except that they were at that time better adapted to Windows 10: he explained that Windows 10 introduced a new rasterizing model for high-resolution displays, and that the UPD was adapted to that, while the model-specific drivers still used the old Windows model, and so often exhibited display issues on high-res computers.

At the same time, he advised NOT to use the latest model-specific drivers (at that time, v.11.2.0 - which is STILL the latest version), but to go back to the earlier v.11.1.2. (He did not say why, just that they were having problems with latest version [I had seen the Windows display problem] -- but the fact that it is still the latest version speaks poorly for their driver development.) [However, at that time I figured I had higher priorities, with the UPD apparently working OK. It took this long for me to recognize that all was not OK, and now it seems that KMBS has abandoned its tech support -- supposedly farmed out to the field offices (of which many have closed), and they seem to be as clueless as I am.]

My final notes from those discussions with KMBS (written in January 2020) summarized these UPD advantages:

• common 32-bit/64-bit Windows layer;
• common interface to A3/A4 printers, which present a common service layer to the network.

Besides simplifying driver inventory, those advantages were supposed to facilitate KM's grand BizHub vision for PullPrinting and WorkPlaceHub (WPH), in which a user prints to a pool of printers or to a printer which, if needed, may then offload to another printer with the necessary capabilities. I don't know; I never saw this vision, let alone how it was dependent on UPD.

It's stunning how little KM's people know about the "KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience" app, or about the UPD, or about the relationship between the two concepts -- which are supposedly central to the BizHub vision -- as I'm now back to working through this basic issue. Thanks for your reply. I'm still groping.

[John Kaufmann]

Re: KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience

I've never paid any attention to it, but did also find the "Print Experience" application in the start menu on my PC. Since we test and set up any number of different models in the office, we use the Universal driver on our PCs in the service department instead of having a ton of different drivers installed.

When opening up that app on my PC, there is nothing in the settings section at all, but I do have one entry on the main page. It almost seems like maybe it is only applicable to really old models of machines. ...

Isn't it strange that we can't find out about that?

Thanks for your reply. I don't know what to make of the fact that people like us, who put in a lot of time on BizHubs -- as well as the KM people I speak with -- are this clueless about what are claimed to be central BizHub concepts. Just as I am stunned at the complete uselessness of the KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience app, which should be a corporate embarrassment. I feel bad for the people who build these machines.

[emujo2]

Re: KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience

From what I can tell...

KM print experience. Installed with UPD ver 4. provides a GUI driver interface when printing via Windows store Apps. I can't find anyone that finds it useful. I believe if you install the UPD v4 manually it does not get installed. I wonder why anyone thought that this should automatically be installed in a print server environment. E