[svlug] never buy an epson - ANYMORE

[Kevin Smathers]

FWIW, although I print only very sporadically the recent generations of 
HP ink jets seems to work quite well.  I have a PSC2410 and am 
reasonably satisfied with it except that the ink runs out a little 
faster that I might hope. 

Walt Reed wrote:
> On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 09:58:28AM -0700, bruce coston said:
>   
>> I loved the old epson I used on my Amiga but good
>> drivers for w98 never came out and it died. Recently I
>> got an epson because new Mac drivers never came out,
>> notice a pattern? I ditched the lemon as it purged far
>> more ink 'preventing print problems' than got neat the
>> page. [ it purged on every system power cycle and
>> needed really frequent refills - I wouldn't even
>> recommend that lemon for a Continuous Ink System as it
>> still burns too many ink dollars ! ] . Canon does not
>> burn the ink so fast and you can get resetting tools
>> etc. for recent printers. My hp cartridges quickly
>> lost their resolution after several refills,
>> eventually the new hp cartridges got so bad they
>> lasted about 3 refills. I seriously prefer 'permanent'
>> print heads and might even fix 1 of the old canon tub
>> printers if I got one. A flood of jets at less than
>> cost killed these economical printers and forced me
>> into my current eco-disaster habit of just buying new
>> printers as they cost less than cartridges. Our
>> laser/s heat the house too much in summer vs inkjets,
>> no A/C.
>>     
>
> I have to "ditto" the sentiment about Epson inkjet printers. The biggest
> problem seems to be infrequent print usage. If you print every day, the
> printheads don't dry out and it ends up working fairly well, but if you
> are an infrequent printer (for example you use a laser for everyday
> printing and just wanted a nice printer for photos) the head-clogging
> problem is too severe to overcome. At some point, you will be unable to
> get a clean test pattern and the built-in cleaning cycle will be
> ineffective. At that point, the printer goes in the garbage, or you have
> to disassemble the entire thing to get at the print head, but good luck
> getting it cleaned manually too. Oh, and your warranty is to short to be
> useful.
>
> The inkjet cost per page is also outrageous. I was getting about 50
> cents a page for color mixed text (like web pages.)
>
> I have to also agree with the kodak easyshare which works awesome for
> 4x6 prints. Larger print jobs are sent off to one of the many internet
> printing  companies. 
>
> I went to a mid-level color laser, the Ricoh SP C410dn which goes for
> about $1K, and prints "near" photo quality IMHO. Clearly, it's not as
> good as the kodak, but it's also quite a bit faster, and works great on
> embedded photos on web pages and other business documents. I've worked
> out that the cost per page on that is around 5 cents per page for
> typical color mixed text. Black and white is Very inexpensive on this
> printer.
>
> Between the kodak, laser, and commercial print shops, I have no need or
> desire to ever go back to inkjet technology.
>
> If I had a need for large-format, I may get a Cannon Pixma...
>
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