MonacoEZcolor, Quality of the Proprietary Target

I recently bought the MonacoEZcolor (v 1.5.3) hoping particularly to achieve better printer calibration. Printer profiles made by the EZcolor however are consistently of very poor quality, profile calibrated prints have rather strong greenish cast and the tonal range is incorrect (cut and compressed at the dark end of the range) so much that even a manual/perceptual calibration gives much better results.

When creating printer profiles the EZ color is restricted (by a software lock) to only use the target made by Monaco Systems that comes with the package, however when creating scanner profiles it also accepts Kodak Q-60 target.

Scanner profile that are created using the Monaco target resulted also a "greenish calibration", but when using the Kodak Q-60 target while creating the profile the calibration will actually be rather good (if the the clipping is not taken into consideration). So I concluded that there could be something wrong with the Monaco target.

The datafile of the Monaco target is encrypted so it is not possible to verify the accuracy of the target therefore I compared the Monaco target against to the Kodak Q-60 in a single pass scan.

The scan on the right is a raw output from Umax Powerlook III scanner with the gamma set to 2.5. Both targets were scanned in the single pass (as one image). Compare the separation of the following patches between Kodak and Monaco targets: 19, 20, 21, 22 and the Dmax (patch 23) in the horizontal graywedge. Yellow: G15,H15;I15,J15,K15;l15 red: J17,K17,L17 green: K18,L18 blue:J19,K19,L19 Rather poor definition.	Click to see in larger size (opens into a new browser window).
The crop on the right is from the above scan that is scaled from 255 to 64 using the output level in the Levels dialog. Monaco target shows pronounced magenta cast, this most probably explains the "greenish calibration". Also the separation of the patches 21,22 and Dmax is nearly nonexistent. The datafile of the Monaco target is for some reason encrypted so it is not possible to verify the magenta error. However, Umax Powerlook III does not create this and the magenta cast is not present on the Kodak target.	GS patches 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and Dmax scaled to level 64 from the above scan.
This is just a crop (not scaled) . Compare the definition in magenta, yellow, red, green and blue in the saturated end. 19, 20, 21, 22 and the Dmax (patch 23) in the horizontal graywedge. Yellow: G15,H15;I15,J15,K15;l15 red: J17,K17,L17 green: K18,L18 blue:J19,K19,L19	Poor definition in Monaco target in saturated colors

For what it is worth, Monaco Systems are not willing/capable to provide me a better calibration target. They are neither willing to enable printer profiling using the Kodak Q-60 target. Instead they suggest me to purchase one of their more professional profiler (and way more expensive also that are btw only available for the Mac system) since the MonacoEZcolor is their entry level profiler.

Lessons? If a company is selling several versions of a software product that all are for the same purpose, calibrated color, then do not expect much from the version that is the least expensive.