With FIM-CM you are limited to which software Middleware and printers you can use (at least the version I am running FIM 2010).
We are running ID Works Enterprise Edition 5.1 on a windows 7 x32 workstation.
CM now supports ID Works Enterprise Edition 6.51 which supposedly can work on an x64 system but we haven’t tried it.
One thing to note is the cm software patch. The CM Update allows the bulk client to be installed on windows 7. But you can't install the client on windows 7 to apply the patch that lets it run on 7. The work around is the Microsoft released
a copy of the bulk client with the patch already applied. This worked fine for the install. But we got errors when we tried to connect to the CM Servers. It couldn't find the templates. Turns out the dlls in the patched bulk client
were newer than the .dlls on the CM server, and this was breaking the notification. We patched the CM server, and everything was good.
For Printers we got 2 SP75 plus Datacard printers. We wanted the higher capacity, and the ability to laminate both sides of the card. We got two for coverage so we will have one when we have to send one in for repair. (Not saying that the
printers are "bad” but they take a lot of abuse printing, and need a lot of care).
Although the Plus printers aren’t listed in the supported printers, we got confirmation from MS that the Plus worked (they replaced the older ones), but that the newer 95's probably wouldn't. (I think they are a different kind of printer).
One more data point to add. Work out your Pin Policy before you buy your cards.
We got our cards first, and then figured out our PIN policy. If we knew our PIN Policy at purchase time, the manufacture (Gemalto) could have set it. We have been working on ways to set it using CM. But have finally given up.
We figured out how to set the PIN policy using APDU commands, and CM can do application management via APDU commands. But it looks like it can only do that for Java Cards, and not the .net cards (yet, we keep hoping). So we are going to set the
Pin Policy before we bulk print. And when we order our next set of cards, we will order them with the PIN policy set.
Over all I am very happy with CM. and there is a lot more information on setting it up now than there was a two years ago (thanks a lot to Paul Adare and Brian Komar, who I am beginning to think are the same person. Has anyone actually
seen both of them at the same time?