It is pretty slow. They may have made improvements though. Mine is at least 10 years old. I buy the premium plus film so I am covered life on the machine. I love the control, density and consistency. If I have a 5 color job from 8 years ago and I loose or damage 1 film I can run a perfect match today. I use the harlequin RIP that came with it. There are lots of features like LPI, angle and dot shape that are really easy to control. Even with in a set of seps you can have 1 color at 45 LPI the others at 65 and 2 with round dots and 1 with elipses.
I am wondering have you considered cts? That is the next step I want to take. It seems like for the money that would be a much faster/better jump.
Matt