Here is a great survey on PDF preflight, that which many also call postflight, which was introduced in this blog post:

Posted by Marco on Jun 23, 2009 in cPDF
In 2008 Enfocus wanted to find out who exactly their clients were. They held a survey. 4.840 users responded. Now who was using what kind of software and on what platform? Where do they live? What’s their primary business? How frequently do they use PDF-files? Do they even check incoming PDF files? And… what were the errors those files contained? See: http://www.digital-engineer.net/archive/entry/preflighters-around-the-world-this-is-you/

The most common preflight problems with PDF print-jobs.

About half have see their print destined PDF’s failing often and the most common problems are non embedded fonts, low res image usage and RGB color space used. Exactly what the problems were about fifteen years ago (Replace non-embedded fonts with missing fonts.) when Markzware first brought out FlightCheck Professional, which can postflight PDF files from Adobe Acrobat (and other software’s) as well as a range of source or native files like XPress, InDesign, MSPublisher and more. View the full survey results here.

Specials going on FlightCheck- save 20-50%! See:
http://www.markzware.com/promotions/  Read more... (208 words, 1 image, estimated 50 secs reading time)

“duke prepress” asks over on the PrintPlanet forum, “Does anyone still preflight jobs if so what programs are you using“? Here are some of the answers:

“mattbeals” chimed in saying, in part: “Yes, there is still a lot of preflighting going on. Two basic methods; native document preflight and PDF based preflighting. For native files the only really functional, and meaningful, preflight comes from FlightCheck…. There are others, but Markzware, Callas and Enfocus are the three real major players if you look at the installation base. Preflight is like an onion, it’s got layers…”

“P-Rex” (Love that user name!) added: “Acrobat has its own Preflight feature built in. Otherwise, PitStop or FlightCheck are good third-party software programs.“

To see all of the comments or to add your own, you can read the full post here:
http://printplanet.com/forums/prepress-workflow-discussion/17908-preflight

Enfocus, an EskoArtwork company, recently released the results of their annual (I think they do something like this every year) survey on the state of file delivery, PDF usage and preflighting within the graphic arts sector. This part especially caught my attention:

It is less encouraging seeing that only sixty percent of PDF files get preflighted before being sent on in the workflow. “Enfocus, and other parties such as the Ghent PDF Workgroup, have spent an enormous amount of time and effort on advocating the need for quality control. Our survey shows that there is still a large amount of users who are not convinced of the need to check every PDF file that hits their workflow. Continued education remains of the essence!” concludes van Driessche.
SOURCE: http://www.packagingessentials.com

Yes, even with tools that offer preflight in various forms, many still do not take the time to administer quality assurance measures! Lastly, this part was interesting too, which we have also noticed:

“In the last 12 months, respondents reported that 53% of jobs were submitted in PDF format, while 78% of the jobs they sent out, either inside or outside their company, were PDF. “  Read more... (234 words, estimated 56 secs reading time)