To add to what Bill said, we don’t yet know how long the new tanks will last, and we really don’t have any data on the replaceable LPU (Laser module), since the Form 3 is so new, nor do we know the costs to replace it.
Regarding the Photon. It comes with a few slicers, it’s own Photon Slicer, Sli3r for SLA which is rebranded from Prusa, and ChiTu Box. I do like Slic3r, and it’s easy to use, but while I did like it a lot for FDM printers, it’s not as flexible for resin printers.
On the other hand ChiTu Box, works well without any tweaks for the Photon, it’s easy to use (fairly automated, AND it has a lot of options you can tweak to improve the printability. In fact I now use it to generate the supports for most of the models I print, including the ones I print on the Form 1+ Printer. I can generate the supports, then save the model with supports as an STL, and print it directly on the Form 1+.
The reason I became “disenchanted” with the Preform, was the way it egenrated support. While it works perfectly fine on larger models, I found that when I got into the small miniatures, the support was oversized, the vertical and diagonal branches are too thick, even though the contact points were small. In many cases, the support branches were placed so close the model that they fused to the sides and that required a lot of cleanup and ruined the surface.
With ChiTu, I can tell the software what the minimum clearance needs to be, and I can also manually move the support away from the body, and even move the contact point. As for “internet data transaction”, I’m not familiar with that function, as I simply save the photon file to a thumb drive, put that in the printer and print, so there’s not wireless printing or anything like that.
Personally I think the ChiTu box has a pretty good future. It’s being updated periodically and it’s being used by a lot of printer users. As for Zotrax, I never even heard of it until you mentioned it.