Customer Reviews

QuarkXpress 6.5

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I have just installed Quark 6 after waiting years for a worthwhile upgrade. It feels to me like a basic rewrite of version 4.11 with no major attention to intergrating with Photoshop psd format, industrial strength Acrobat PDF making tools and no compatibility with Illustrator .ai drawing format.

I wonder if the CEO of Quark has the faintest idea what the CORE business of designers really is or what they expect from Quark. Designers use Dreamweaver or Golive to make websites and wanted Quark 6 as a rock stable design LAYOUT tool with cool features - no more. It was the Mac community that built the Quark company yet they have quickly abandoned their client in the search for new fields in the PC sea.

I got a clean install and registration via the web, followed by multiple crashes and conflicts with fonts in OSX 10.2.6 when I did basic things like try to open 4.11 files, try to Export as PDF and try to use Suitcase X1 to autoactivate fonts I have been using for years. The program really lacks any tolerance to font duplicates under OSX.

Quark 6.1 must soon intergrate with Adobe photoshop, Acrobat distiller and Illustrator or it will flick,spin,crash and burn into the forgotton wasteland. In that wasteland you will find every software company that abandoned its CORE business and clients.

I don't care where it's made, but I really DO care about stability, features and more stability.

Also I would like to question the integrity of MAC and PC websites who have given Quark v6 a 4/5 rating. These journalists are easily distracted by press-release-smoke-screens of new web features designers don't depend on. As a registered user of Quark for 10 years, I give the new version 2 or 3/5 for its lack of new typesetting features, poor dictionary, token-only layers, 1200mm size limit, general anti-Adobe compatibility and font instability.

I will also be crossgrading to In-design to protect my future.

I love Quark's software. But it does have its quirks. First, most of its latest improvements seem to be in tweaking an aggravating activation system that is frequently corrupted and requires reactivation. So if you're operating off a notebook and can't reactivate, you have to call Quark, wait forever for a new code to be generated, and painstakingly type it in.

Second, Quark has gone through great lengths to make its web design module work better, but I never use Quark for web design, so that only makes the program bigger and klunkier.

Quark 6 does do multiple undos, for which it deserves kudos; however, it's maddening to find out that not all actions are undoable. Write down the ones that aren't or you'll be sorry.

Finally, one computer, one program. Forget about having this baby on your home and work computer or your desktop and notebook.

My advice? If you have Quark 5, keep it and cherish it. If you don't, get Quark 5 off EBay and let some other sucker upgrade. And finally, if you want to come over to the light side of The Force, get Adobe's fabulous InDesign. Not only is it better behaved, it has no activation and you can put it on both of your computers. It's also more stable. For me personally, I'm staying with Quark 5.

Good luck.

I am a graphic designer that has been using Quark since the begining. I absoulutely HATE version 6.0 and warn anyone thinking of upgrading to STAY AWAY! If you are looking at both Quark and In Design and don't know which to choose GO FOR IN DESIGN! Quark 6.0 is so full of bugs that you will need to tent your computer (after you pull all of your hair out). I just installed it (after much trouble getting it, due to Quark's terrible customer support and mess up in my order verification) I have only been using it for 2 hours (much of that spent trying to fix the mess ups to no avail) So far... the library feature doesn't work correctly (to put it mildly) I have 6 years of libraries and many items won't pull up (you can select the label for an item and it won't show up in the library) when I am scrolling through it will crash the library so that by the time you are in the "M" section it starts over at "A" and skips the rest of the alphabet (bet you never had that happen before), when you double click on an item to get its label it has to think for about 30 seconds (I have a top of the line machine with so much memory it would make your head swim). Then, the paste feature doesn't work AT ALL (no shortcut, no way, no how) and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

If you are looking for a layout program for the first time and someone told you Quark is a must, just walk away and learn In Design. Adobe is the best company out there and Quark is not worth the frustration or heartache.

This is the most poorly designed software yet from Quark. First, installing it can prove to be a terror if you have to ever reinstall it. Quark has set up a monstrous procedure where you must call them or attempt at their website to activate the software, which can force you to wait 2 to 3 days before you can use it. The orginal from the factory is actually their demo. Not just that, but the length of the activation code is 47 numbers and even though you get them right, they won't work on their website application/registration/activation page.

Now, let's assume you get that far. Once into the working Quark you'll find you spent a lot of money for nothing more than what Quark 4.1 offers except for a "clear vision" extension and some minor bells and whistles. They advertise that you can "build web pages" using Quark, clearly deceiving you to believe you can "translate existing Quark documents" to web pages. Forget it. You have to redo or build from scratch. It's also very old technology and is not the kind of page you want to post against the newer W3C rules. You'll play with the deveil in the end.

Best to use the older version if you still have it. If you've never used Quark and are tempted to buy it to try it...go to Adobe's Indesign first or pick up an older copy of Adobe's Pagemaker.

Finally, Quark's support service is AWFUL. They just aren't there for you when you need them, unless you pay them a lot of money for a "service agreement." If you do get hold of someone, they are in a foreign country and barely understandable and worse, they are reading something or blaming you for their product not working correctly. Quark has changed from its original service company to the newer modern insult-the-customer business style.

Thumbs down on this one.

I've been using QuarkXpress for 8 years and was a dedicated Xpress user until the release of Quark 6.0 (which I purchased). The pdf feature and the high resolution preview of eps files and OSX compatibility as well as it's familiarity made me give it a try. I've been using Xpress 6 for about a month now and I'm not impressed. Customer support is weak at best and it is almost impossible to register because users have to enter a serial number and a registration number and a one hundred digit activation code (I'm not kidding 100 numbers and letters). Quark claims it's software will activate automatically on-line. It doesn't if you have a firewall. Many of the new features Quark claims to have added are extensions that must be installed separately (high res preview for eps images being one of them). Quark 4.11 users will be upset to learn that 6.0 will only save down to version 5.0 and there isn't a plug-in to fix this oversight as Quark claims. The icing on the cake is that if you change computers or if your system has trouble and you need to re-install QuarkXpress 6 you'll have to call Quark and get a new activation code. Be prepared to wait a week or two. Now if you've wasted enough of your valuable time you've probably been like me and bought a copy of InDesign. Yeah I have to learn a few things to be as fast as I was in Quark ..but it'll be worth it . The best part of InDesign is that I registered Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive and InDesign with one serial number and I was up and running (at half the price of QuarkXpress).

I am actually writting this review while on the phone with their tech support group in India. I can barely understand the person and the can you believe that you have to call them to reactivate the software every time we go from Daylight Savings Time to Daylight Time. That is twice per year. There is a bug in their authentication/serial number system, which by design includes the DST flag for the local computer in the activation routine.

This is crazy...After paying full price for two copies, why do I have to spend 30 minutes per machine twice per year to reactivate their product to help them control piracy, of which I am not a part of.

Sounds like class action suit time...We should all sue for the time lost just in reactivating their products.

I used to be happy with version 3.x and 4.x.

At my work we layout books, ads, brochures, etc. and WERE using Quark for everything. For years Quark had a lock on the industry. It was, and is, a stable platform for printing. As late as a few years ago all our printers and service bureaus demanded Quark. They all had custom setups that worked very well with Quark. TODAY, that is no longer true. ALL of the printers we work with now PREFER Adobe Acrobat. Since Quark has always been a royal piece of trash with regard to its usability (bad user interface, clunky operations, and features that are designed like we are still in the early 1990's), the good news is there is no longer a reason to keep it. We now use a variety of software packages to produce our printed products and just convert them all to Adobe PDF. Quark is astonishingly bad with regard to the workflow conveniences people expect in modern high-end software packages. Our productivity in the design of print products has vastly improved by dropping Quark. Unless Quark RADICALLY improves its product, there is little need to use it professionally today.

My experience with Quark has also been a nightmare and no one at Quark ever even suggested that their software might just be the problem. I was never offered even an upgrade much less a refund. I asked for a refund and didn't get it. I guess they think $800-900 isn't a lot of money. I noticed the price has been greatly reduced since I bought mine. Good luck to everyone else who has purchased Quark and my condolences to you all.

Let me just start by saying Quark is absolute garbage. I come from adobe and corel, and quark is by far the most obtuse, clunky, buggy, bloated, backwards piece of software I've ever used. Little things like creating bullet points and changing font sizes on the fly take you 3 clicks through aggrivating menus, wherein corel it takes one click on your toolbar. As for it being the "print" standard, I use .tiff and .pdf for all my printing, and granted I havent done a huge amount of print work, but the work I do comes out fine and prints flawlessly from a corel PDF or Photoshop. I find most functions in quark are in corel, like creating masterpages and wrap around for text, that are MUCH more intuative in corel than in quark. I guess for magazines or books would be the only real reason to have this software, as flyers, brochures, and most other text layout graphics can easily be created in photoshop. I find myself searching through the help menu to find how to do simple things, like changing fonts on the fly, etc. Even using Indesign for my page layout is breathlessly EASY. I can change fonts on the fly, create lists easily, styles work how you'd think, and so on. Evenw ith quark 7 coming, i think it's too late for them to turn around. Indesign has taken over and so has corel. Say goodbye to this POS.

Unless you NEED this software for compatibilty with a dying printer shop you do business with, I would NOT EVEN THINK about buying this bloated mess. Buy a version of 5 and buy a copy of Indesign instead.

Quark Xpress 6 could really use a better manual. I prefer Adobe InDesign, but my job requires me sometime to work with Quark. Maybe I am just the Dummy that they write all those books for...