# Rant about Epson Printer



## ntexasdude (Jan 23, 2005)

:rant: This is a rant about my new (6 months old) Epson R320 printer. It's a spectacular printer quality wise, not too fast but not painfully slow either. It will print labels on printable cd 's and dvd's. It prints borderless 4 x 6's that look every bit as good as a photo lab. It uses the 6 color cartridge system and that is part of my gripe. Somehow I ended with 5 full cartridges and one almost empty light magenta. Sooo...last night I was trying to print a draft quality black and white page of text. The print driver pops a warning and a dialog to buy more ink online. There is no way to close the box. So you are seemingly stuck in limbo until you whip out a credit card and buy new ink. ARRRGGGHHH. It finally occurred to me to go to task manager and kill the pop up box - that worked and I got it to print.
Another rant - there is not a way that I can see to print in black and white only. No selection for greyscale or B&W in the print driver.

This has become an expensive printer to own. I paid $200 in Jan 05 and I've spent at least that much in ink. Sam's Club has a 6 pack of the cartridges for $60. They are about $13 each at Best Buy.

Whew, feel better now. Had to get it off my chest.  
:rant:


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## Bogy (Mar 23, 2002)

Dude, I use a Canon s820 for my color printing, mostly photos. It uses 7 cartridges, @ 11 or 12 bucks a pop. I used to be able to buy them nearby, but it is now 40 miles to the nearest place I can get them. I keep a set on hand.

I also have an HP Laserjet (can't remember exactly what model it is right now) for all the non-color printing. I've had both a laser and an inkjet for some years. Inkjets cost 25 cents a page on up to a buck. Lasers generally cost more in the 3 cent range. At the cost of lasers today it is much cheaper to buy one for all the general printing than to use a color inkjet for all your printing.


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## CopyChief (Jan 17, 2005)

I recently shopped for a new color printer to replace my Epson for the very reason you cite: Even if you're printing in black-and-white only, you can't print at all if a color cartridge is empty. Not sure if that's a driver issue or a hardware issue, but it doesn't matter. I found that my new Canon does not have this issue. It's faster than my old Epson and the ink is a little cheaper... I don't print enough to make the laser option worthwhile. That's the other problem I had with the Epson: the print heads clogged on a regular basis. Maddening.


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## olgeezer (Dec 5, 2003)

Printing photos is fun, but expensive. If you have a local professional photo shop they can do 4x6s from digital at not much more than half of the true cost of doing them at home. And your prints will be silver based halide real photos, that should last much longer than your ink jet prints. You are doing the important thing, which is making a photo. It sounds ludicrous, but a photo isn't a photo until it's a photo. When is the last time you had a photo made from a negative?


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## Bogy (Mar 23, 2002)

olgeezer said:


> Printing photos is fun, but expensive. If you have a local professional photo shop they can do 4x6s from digital at not much more than half of the true cost of doing them at home. And your prints will be silver based halide real photos, that should last much longer than your ink jet prints. You are doing the important thing, which is making a photo. It sounds ludicrous, but a photo isn't a photo until it's a photo. When is the last time you had a photo made from a negative?


Actually, I've been digging out my old negatives and slides and scanning them to make photos. 
One of my daughters is an art major and does lots of photography, almost exclusively B&W. She loves to do her own processing & printing.


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## n8dagr8 (Aug 14, 2004)

ntexasdude said:


> Another rant - there is not a way that I can see to print in black and white only. No selection for greyscale or B&W in the print driver.


when you hit print do you not get a box that pops up asking quality, number of pages, what pages, etc? I'm not familiar with that model number (probably should have googled it before I posted). I have an EPSON Stylus CX5400...there is a properties tab and then advanced....once in there I can click "black ink only"


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## olgeezer (Dec 5, 2003)

Bogy said:


> Actually, I've been digging out my old negatives and slides and scanning them to make photos.
> One of my daughters is an art major and does lots of photography, almost exclusively B&W. She loves to do her own processing & printing.


That's great. My oldest daughter was a photographer and my youngest is an art teacher. Glad you could find your old negatives.


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## Redster (Jan 14, 2004)

n8dagr8 said:


> when you hit print do you not get a box that pops up asking quality, number of pages, what pages, etc? I'm not familiar with that model number (probably should have googled it before I posted). I have an EPSON Stylus CX5400...there is a properties tab and then advanced....once in there I can click "black ink only"


Yep, yep we have an Epson 870 Photo printer. It allows us to specify black / white by using the prompt before printing box .


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## ntexasdude (Jan 23, 2005)

We usually use the Walmart photo lab. We upload the pics and they are ready to pick up in an hour and are much cheaper. But it's nice to have the printer capability when you just want a few quick ones.

On the comments on B&W, I've looked high & low in the print driver dialog box and all the options tabs and just don't see a check box for it.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

I've been using the R320 here for about 3 months. Paid $139 for it with some coupons. I am very much impressed with it's performance. I use it mostly on a daily basis for DVD printing. I print from 30 to 50 DVD's per day and it is painful to do that as I sit here and hand load each one. 

Comments- I did some cost analysis here and this is what I got-

Full color DVD coverage was 350 DVD's per ink set. 

B&W text went through just the Black cartridge in 970 DVD's The text coverage was probably about 15% guessing. 

As for ink cost I really can't complain. It is very economical and I have found a local ink supplier of the Epson set for $50. I just bought my 3rd set of cartridges on Sunday. 


Running is a manual operation and it is getting quite old as my DVD duplication business builds. This morning I ordered an automated printer. Just put in 100 DVD's and let it print unattended. This is the Microboards Print Factory II. It is supposed to be even more econimical on ink than the Epson. I had been waiting for the volume to pick up here before going into a high speed DVD printer since the PF II costs $2k. 


I did use the Epson R320 for a paper job recently. It was a card stock full color on one side and B&W image half full on the other side. Announcement cards. I was really pleased with the quality but again, being card stock the auto feed didn't work well so I had to hand feed the stock. 


Re the out of ink warning window. I just ignored the nag screen until the cartridge actually ran out. installed that one and was good to go. Really simple process compared to my HP ink jet printers. 

Bogy- I like the HP laserjets too. I since replaced my 13 year old HPIII with a Minolta color laser jet. Color Laserjets do nice document photographics but not picture quality. Cost per page is a bit more than straight B&W, but I decided I just wanted to have that kind of luxury in my documents. It is nice to print a web page and have it all in full color as it is seen on the screen. But for photographics, the Epson is my best quality. I also have an Officejet scanner/printer/photocopier. I use it for mostly scanning and photocopies. It is not as good as the Epson for photo real images. 


Well I just hit 100 DVD's printing on the Epson for the day so I'm outta here. Sure wish that Print factory II would get here. I have 300 more DVD's to do on this order.


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## CoriBright (May 30, 2002)

Printing in black uses magenta and cyan to make the black look 'blacker'.... nearly all printers will refuse to print with one color tank empty... c'est la vie.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

To be quite honest, I generally dislike the inkjet printers because of the relatively high cost of the ink. I also don't see a compelling reason to give up my reliable HP Laserjet 4. While it's 12 years old, it is still printing like a champ. It is very hard to justify color when most of my printing is in black and while. What do instructors want? Papers in black and white unless it includes graphs. Yes, there are some good low-end color laser printers, but again, why spend the money?


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Mark- I agree! If one is able to afford the luxury of several printers, it becomes the argument of best tool for the job, but when you have a position to only afford (I'm not just talking money but also convenience/efficiency) one printer, then an Ink jet seems to satisfy most's needs. If given just one printer, I would choose the inkjet. If I just needs B&W and never color but has a buch of documents to print, then laserjet is the answer.
eg. When I'm traveling, I carry a canon BJ85 since it can double as a scanner and color/B&W printer of decent quality. I have used it to print off some business cards in a pinch, but also used to run off a dozen model release forms while in the field on a production shoot when I got caught short. But at the office, I like to maximize my bang for the buck with the best affordable printer for the job calling. I am sitting here for the second day now printing all day long, these DVD's on the R320. Ink cost is no problem but it's the labor cost of my time to be interrupted every 3 minutes to insert another blank. I think ink cost on these applications is like having a car that does 30mpg but has a 25gallon tank. It cost you $75 to fill up which is painful but you get so much travel on that one tank.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Well I have both an EPSON R800 and an EPSON R200. I got the EPSON R800 because I wanted the archival fade resistent Ink. I got the EPSON R200 later to keep cost down when printing a home DVD/CDs. I love the DVD/CD printing capabilities of the EPSON line and people are amazed at the quality. They are really suprised I printed them myself. 

As to the orginal question on having to purchase ink before using it. Maybe it is a new thing with the R320, but the R200 and R800 do not require you to purchase ink before continueing. All I get is a warning nag which is not a bad thing. It might even have a check box telling me not to warn me anymore if I recall. 

You might just need to close the dialog or there might be an option in the printer preferences. I would be really suprised that it would not allow you to print until you order more ink. I would expect it not to print if it sensed an empty ink cartridge. If I recall there are ways to get around Epson thinking your cartridge is empty. I have heard that with Epson when they say it is empty there is still a bit left.


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## bobsupra (Jul 12, 2002)

I stopped buying OEM print cartridges a long time ago. Now I purchase remanufactured ones, on line, at about 1/3 the cost plus free shipping, no state taxes. I get them in 2 days and keep a small stock on hand. Generally they last about 75% of the OEM and I've only had one occasion where the cartridge was bad. There are many on-line distributors...the one I like is Printpal.com.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

I also have had issues with OEM cartridges which stopped me purchasing. Just was not worth the hassle and them seemed to clodge a lot because I am not the type of person that uses it ever day. 

I am not saying OEM cartrdiges are not a way to go. I have read posts of people have some good experiences with them. But they do take more care and also you have the issue with printer colar calibration if you are doing photo printing and you really want accurate color representation.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

I'm in the middle of this large print job with the R320 and can now verify that with a total B&W job the Black, Light cyan and Light Magenta are being used on straight black text. There is a small yellow logo on the DVD so a small bit of the yellow cartridge is also being used.

The nag screen to order ink, as I recall will ask you to stop reminding, remind me later, or order now but that screen does not in any way prevent you from running until the cartridge is out. There is another screen that pops up when you are low, I believe 85% used up in any of the cartridges. It also invites you to change now or advises how many copies you may get until out similar to the last job printed. I personally allow the cartridge to run until that screen shows an X on the cartridge. Then I change it out and continue printing until the next one has an X. If you are printing, say 50 DVD's, the nag screen will respect your wishes until you try to print the next job, not the next disk.

I also bought the R200 first and found it was a nightmare of errors on the DVD feed tray. The R320 has worked flawlessly so far. I was able to reuse the ink carts from the partly used R200 when I replaced it with the R320. 

Some new printer companies are designing their cartridges to trigger a stop mode if you try to use any other brand or refill their cartridges. I heard HP started this and there is some hacks around this. I think they are using this tactic to get out of warranty repair if you should need work on the printer later on. I know the new Microboards printer is designed this way and if you try to hack past it they will refuse to repair anything even if you want to pay for the service. I really have no problem with this as long as I know about it up front. Besides, the ink cost efficiency of these commercial printers is not worth messing with and screwing up an expensive machine. 

I may get some nag screens on this R320 before this job is done and if so, I'll post what the deal is because I'll take the time to read into the popups.


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## dpd146 (Oct 1, 2005)

I had an Epson all in one (don't remember the model) that did a great job on all the functions. The problem is it stopped working after 6 months. 

Wish I would of kept the warranty documentation. Lesson learned


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## zmark (Apr 18, 2005)

If you do enough printing on a regular basis, you should look into a "Continuous Inkflow System". These are special ink cartridges with small tubes leading to ink tanks outside the printer. Then buy your ink in bulk and refill the ink tanks as needed.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Finally got the Microboards Print Factory II up and working. WOW! what a fine piece of machinery. Built like a tank, it was a bit bigger than I anticipated. BUT, it printed a quick 15 DVD job in less than 12 minutes. NO touch except to load up the hopper select print 15 and walk away. We'll see how the ink lasts but It does require that I buy the ink from Microboards to stay within warranty.


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## cdru (Dec 4, 2003)

zmark said:


> If you do enough printing on a regular basis, you should look into a "Continuous Inkflow System". These are special ink cartridges with small tubes leading to ink tanks outside the printer. Then buy your ink in bulk and refill the ink tanks as needed.


I was just going to say the same thing. The systems really aren't that expensive (cheap example, more expensive better quality example) and would quickly pay for itself. The refill dye ink runs around $30 and the pigment around $50.

Here is a "review" of one of the systems, the more expensive (but still relatively cheap in the long run) InkRepublic system.


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## lastmanstanding (Mar 22, 2003)

I bought a Samsung color laser last year, ran through two sets of toners but before the second set was empty it began asking for a new belt and imager. With new toner and requested parts the tab was $700 for a printer that cost $400 new. Rather than dance that tune I picked up a Xerox Phaser. The Samsung was cheap enough to buy, but long term -- ouch. Of course none of that was mentioned when I bought it. 

LMS


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## CoriBright (May 30, 2002)

The default printer on my network is a Lexmark Optra S 1625 (laser) that I got for $14.75 on EBay. A remanufactured toner is about $50. However I'm still on the same one I bought just after I got the printer!

The inkjets are used for when I want to print photos or something in color like my husband's business cards.... all Canon because they don't clog when you haven't used them for a week or so.... i950, i850 and i560

Epson's are infamous for clogging. You have to use them at least once a week or you'll find yourself replacing the ink cartridges.


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## ntexasdude (Jan 23, 2005)

I gave away a perfectly good HP 720C deskjet. I wish I had it back for a backup or for just web pages and text in B&W. 

I Use a small Brother laser at work and it's fanatastic. I think it cost less than $200.

Back to the Epson. Had I known it uses the color inks to make the black blacker I may not have bought it.

Has anyone actually tried the continuous flow system cdru and zmark mentioned?I showed it to my wife and she was very interested in it.


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