OT vent: I HATE my Epson printer

[kevinnem]

oh man, I JUST bought a printer about 2 hours ago, .epson... it is a r220


DID I MAKE A BIG MES UP??????? PLEASE TELL ME SOON!!!!???

[blue2blue]

Well... it DOES do a pretty decent job of printing on CDs... although Steve's assertion (and I've known him a long time in internet years so I know he's not just some intern from Epson who's prowling the boards ) that the CD's are "waterproof" is something that completely floors me. (I've smeared a week old print with a wet paper towell, admittedly on a printable with a smoother surface, not the coarse matte surface DVDs I've been buying lately.)

I don't know of anything else cheap that prints on CDs, so I'm afraid if you want decent looking CD's (without stick-ons) you may have to put up with this -- and, hey, I'm guessing that 220 is next generation so hopefully they've further worked out some of the issues.


You may find the text quality is acceptable, I have to admit I've always been very fussy about text print outs (I was an office manager at the dawn of the desktop computer age... the sound and print quality of early dot matrix printers is burned into my brain... accounts for... so much). And maybe you can find a paper that works better than the papers I've tried for photos. (Photos -- or rather print outs of them -- are no big deal to me, anyway. I look at everything on a screen.)


But -- hey -- if the CD/DVD printing is your main thing and you're willing to put up with a certain awkwardness of use (and, at least for some, troublesome drivers [but let it NOT be said I haven't run into HP drivers that were wack, too]), it does do a decent job of getting small, sharp text on a DVD. I typically print out the cast of old movies I dump off my DVR box [VCR-doctrine, analog transfer from box to box, personal use only, strictly legit] and I can use 5 pt type which is pretty darn small -- but it comes out nice and sharp.


You need something. What else is there?

[blue2blue]

Aw, geez... $70 worth of new ink cartridges I'll possibly never use but need since it won't print unless every cartridge is at least 1/8th full (! -- meaning, of course, that you have to throw out 'good' ink)... and this POS is printing -- about every other try. (Since coming back with the new ink carts.)

The rest of the time it just mysteriously hangs up.

You turn on the printer (it usually refuses to print two CD/DVD's in a row, so you pretty much have to go through the very lengthy boot process every time. SOMETIMES -- IF you got the CD tray pulled out by hand in the 10 or 15 second window when that must be done so that it doesn't hang up completely, sometimes you can get away with printing two in a row.

But all too often the printer goes through about half the motions of setting itself up to print on the DVD but then just goes into an error mode.

OF COURSE, that completely hangs up the CD printing app which then must be three-fingered off your screen. (Oddly, the driver seems to close down on its own -- MOST times.)

But then, USUALLY, if you turn off the friggin printer, clear the CD printing app, make sure the driver's unloaded itself, turned the thing back on, waited for a couple minutes while it goes through a number of clunking, thunking operations in some sort of prep ritual, then, OFTEN AS NOT, the F'ing thing works like it's supposed to.

What was wrong in the first place? Why does it work one time and not the next?

Who the F knows...


But... like I said, until someone else gets a CD printer out at a reasonable price, it looks like were's stuck.

HOPEFULLY that 220 will be better.

We'll have to wait and see what our intrepid 220-buyers find out. Good luck, guys. I hope this thing doesn't make us both regret my advice to keep your printers!

[dougb415]

Sorry you're having those problems. I too have the R200 and I *love* this printer. Printing directly to DVD for $59? Unbelievable! The quality is excellent, and I buy full ink cart replacements (all 6 carts) for $18 off of the net. Hard to beat that.

[blue2blue]

I'm obviously gonna have to check out some of those off-brand replacement cartridges... $18 sounds like a WHOLE lot better deal than paying $70 -- make that $85 with black -- for a set of Epson inks!


Thanks for the input. That makes me feel a bit better about my advice last night to those guys to hang onto their newer model 220's.


That said, the honeymoon following my ink cart purchase was over when the very second CD I tried to print failed and had to be started over. (It printed the second time. Why not the first? As far as I could tell, all conditions were the same.)


I'm thinking QC problems at Epson, since some folks appear to have no probs and so many others have so many.

cheers




--------------

[i'm pretty sure I'll be sticking with my decision to avoid Epson in the future. This is the most troublesome, unreliable printer out of the five I've owned. Although there was an HP that was about half as bad -- which I considered unacceptable. Two other HPs were fine and my Toshiba 24 pin dot matrix turned out a very good print out, considreing -- not as black but a little tighter than the Epson -- but it was somehwat noisy and the tractor feed was a bit touchy. But then, that's kinda dot-matrixes in a nutshell.]

[Raymar]

Hey Blue,

Maybe you just gotta lemon. Is your warrenty still good? If so take it back.

Steve

[UstadKhanAli]

Originally posted by blue2blue I'm thinking QC problems at Epson, since some folks appear to have no probs and so many others have so many.

 

 

That'd be my guess as well. There's one Epson Stylus 740 at my work that has never had a problem. Then there's mine.

 

I was displeased when I got the Epson printer at work that I mentioned earlier, even before I got it out of the box. This is because a lot of computer stores were giving away these printers with computer purchases, which is often a sign that the thing sucks or is cheap.

 

The first day, the gears already were grinding intermittently, and it paper jammed several times. On the first day. This thing wasted no time sucking. And from there, it's just gone downhill.

[deanmass]

I have given up on home color printing...Walgreens...

I have owned color printers since 1989, and NONE have performed as promise, and ALL have cost a fortune to make run correctly. They are not worth frustration or cost. It is TOO east to get perfect output for pennies now at the local pharmacy, or the net.

[blue2blue]

I'll check my warranty card. But, honestly, I can't see taking this thing down to a box-up place, spending another 40 or 50 dollars to ship it... after already dumping this 70 for colored ink I need just to print B&W (!)and which "went dry" without even being used for months, ie, one day, it just decided it was "out" of sufficient colored ink to print B&W. (How LAME is that? Or DEVIOUS... I don't even WANT to print color (particulary since the photo prints are not as good as my HP and the ink is even more expensive!)... all I want to do is have neat labels on my old movie DVDs (VCR doctrine, analog copy).

Last night, after initially balking and needing to be rebooted in order to print, it behaved like a little gentleman. But this a.m. when I turned it on went to print a DVD... Christmas lights. I dutifully pulled the CD tray back out, since the printer can't be rebooted with it in, recycled the pwoer, waited, waited, waited and when it was finally done with its power cycle after a couple minutes, it printed fine.

What made the difference? Why does it print one time and not another? Nothing changed on the computer. You power it up once and it fails. You power it up the next time, it works. But the next time, it's likely to fail.

And, of course, it's a fools errand to try to print two CD/DVD's in a row. SOMETIMES it works, but usually it's Christmas tree lights.

One thing I will say, it usually hangs up before its done anything more than put a couple smudges of ink on the disk.

You wouldn't want to send that to a client of course, but rebooting and using that disk to print on is ok for my purposes.


Really, a POS.

___________


When I compare it to the Panasonic [set-top] DVD-recorder I bought a few weeks ago, it's like comparing Superman and Bizarro Superman. (Apples and oranges, I admit it -- but they're BOTH consumer products from big companies.)

The Panasonic just keeps chugging away. I've burned something like 75 discs in a few weeks -- and probably HALF of those were 'doubles' (two movies on one disc) which works the unit that much longer and also runs the CPU hotter, since its got to do the extra conversion. (It does warm up a little more at longer play speeds, but for "2 hr" mode it stays nice and cool, thanks I suppose, to the truly nearly silent fan [or maybe the fan has just never fired all the way].

The Panasonic is so well designed [i think I'd only change one thing off the top of my head -- and, I think you can imagine, it's a rare product I feel that sanguine about] and such a trooper. (I did have a couple discs come out 'out of sync' on vid and audio for some reason I can't figure out, early on. But I think I accidentally recorded a couple at 6 or 8 hour mode. Anyhow it hasn't seemed to be a problem.)



Anyway... the Epson DOES make a nice clean CD label when things go okay... and what else is there?

But I can't IMAGINE buying something else from Epson.

[PBBPaul]

I've ever had any problem with my R200 other than the expensive ink. For that, I've been buying Rhinotek. You can buy the cartridges individually from them for less than half of what Epson charges.

FWIW, here are the part numbers:
Cyan: T048220-RC
Light cyan: T048520-RLC
Black: T048120-RB
Yellow: T048420-RY
Magenta: T048320-RM
Light magenta: T048620-RLM

[blue2blue]

Hey, thanks for all the helpful info! i'll definitely copy those p/n's down.

And thanks for weighing in, here, clearly some folks don't have any problems with this printer. And that info may be helpful to folks making decisions on it... after all, there's not a lot out there in this product category. And it DOES doe a decent job of CD printing when it works... it's just really frustrating turning it on and off all the time and having to attend it like a handmaiden attents a spoiled princess.

Feed the tray in. Pull it out when it fails. Reboot the printer. Come back in a few minutes when it's finally done clunking and bumping and reinsert the CD tray, hoping it goes this time. And then be ready to pull the CD tray out at the point when it's pushed as far out as it can go and the motors sit there spinning until it goes into error mode.


BTW... while my beloved Panasonic DVD recorder got overall very good reviews (nailing a 4.2/5 for the $150 Panasonic, compared to the only better reviewed machcine, a $370ish Sony with 4.3)... BUT there WERE a small handful of people reviewing who said they'd had terrible results with the Panasonic. So... you know.


Thanks to all for helping me vent.

It may have seemed unseemly, all these capital letters and borderline vulgarisms flying around -- but, trust me, it was a much needed safety valve that kept me from a couch-kicking, cat-scaring middle-aged man tantrum.

I thank you. My cat thanks you.

[thankyou]

Well, I'll be damned. I was going to copy some lyrics to take to a jam and upon hitting the copy button, the RX 620 let out a loud yelp, then began its official sounding grinding and whirring only to let out another yelp, this time giving an error message: "Scanner error occurred. Please see documentation." I turned it off and on - nothing but the error message. It will print off the computer, but the scanner - the main reason I bought it - is apparantly stuck.

I just wish it had said "I can't do that Dave.", 'cause then I'd have been able to say,

"Dave's not here."

I have a piano affectionatly named Mr. Wewus. It's with a different feeling that this Epsonofa... will become Hal.

I'm outta warrenty and outta luck
Most of all,
I'm outta two hundred bucks.

[blue2blue]

Oh ho...

I found THIS tidbit on the Epson FAQ page for my printer:

Q: The printer is out of color ink even though I print in black only. Why does this happen? A: To keep the print head clear, the printer uses a small amount of ink from all the cartridges whenever it prints. Even if you set the printer software to print black only, some color ink is still being used.

Let's just make sure our users have to keep buying ALL those color cartridges...

That said I have no doubt that ink jets can clog, I suppose. Although last time I used my old HP it seemed to work fine. And it hasn't run in months. But, anyway, at least they've documented the behavior. Skanky as it may seem to the newly cynical.


I filled out a customer service request for the intermittent-balkiness issue. We'll see... I've got a shiney cyber-quarter that says they say, "pack it up and send it to us at your expense and we'll fix it for $150" -- or something very much like that.

[PBBPaul]

I have a question...

If almost all of your printing is in B&W, why not pick up a second printer that is B&W only?

That's what I did. I have an old Laserjet on the shelf next to my R200.

[doug osborne]

(I do have a cheap Konica-Minolta laser printer for text printing - toner's cheaper than ink, and a new printer with a new toner cartridge is cheaper than a new toner cartridge)

And, make a second driver for any color inkjet printer. Normally, when you print black on a color inkjet, it uses all the color cartridges (they're selling the blade, not the razor). Set it to black only, call it xxxprinter Black. Use this as a printer preset - print with this and you'll only suck black ink, which is cheaper than all-color black.

[blue2blue]

PBBPaul

I probably should have been a little more specific. I use the printer for very little else besides DVD or CD labels. But THOSE are B&W/greyscale.

(OK, and the occasional print out of computer code when I'm trying to re-suss whatever the hell I did a year or two before in some module or other. I tape the sheets together to simulate an old gate-fold print out so I can see the whole module 'at a glance'... it's a coder thing, I guess.)


But the printing I've been doing to the discs has been black and white -- mostly because when I printed a few discs that were full color across the disc, I saw my color cartrides VISIBLY sinking... A couple CD's literally drained the color carts by about 1/8 (on the Epson software ink meters)... so I started using black ink.


And, Doug, I definitely DO have the Epson driver set to BLACK ONLY -- but, as suggested in the quote from their website above -- BLACK ONLY to Epson means a little bit of color, too, just to keep you running back and forth to the computer store... uh, I mean, to keep your jets from becoming plugged from underuse. [OK, OK... I'm willing to give them an inch on this. Imagine how annoyed I would have been if the color carts were half full but couldn't be used.]

I loved the helpful suggestion on the Epson site: since the printer will not print if ANY single cart is empty or clogged or otherwise not working, they recommend you keep an EXTRA cartridge of every color on hand... after all, that's ONLY $85 for Epson ink at Compusa.

[i WILL be buying third party ink, per the helpful suggestions above and thanks again!]


BTW... I have worked out a good system with the fairly dorky but still workable disc printing software... I copy whatever image I want to use as a background into the paste buffer (say from Google image search) and crank the brightness way up, the contrast way down, and the blur up, which gives a nice vaguely graphic background that doesn't appear to suck down to much ink and leaves the text clearly visible. (Again, these are legit, personal-use-only "VCR doctrine" analog copies, mostly from old movies on my cable-box DVR, through its RCA video outs. The text is usually cast lists grabbed off All Movie guide.)

[MorePaul]

OK, and the occasional print out of computer code when I'm trying to re-suss whatever the hell I did a year or two before in some module or other. I tape the sheets together to simulate an old gate-fold print out so I can see the whole module 'at a glance'... it's a coder thing, I guess.)

 

I feel ya there

 

yeah, I mean yeah the newer guys are like "oh but my editor has all these cool features!" -- sometimes I still want the "the scroll" taped to the wall with the loops and stuff bracket out with penciled lines and all that good stuff

[PBBPaul]

Originally posted by blue2blue PBBPaul I probably should have been a little more specific. I use the printer for very little else besides DVD or CD labels. But THOSE are B&W/greyscale.

 

 

I thought that as soon as I hit "submit".

 

Just to clarify... You are printing directly to printable DVDs and CDs, right? Not to labels?

 

I'd start buying third-party inks. It's a lot more palatable than Epson's over-priced stuff and I've had great luck so far.

[PBBPaul]

Originally posted by blue2blue BTW... I have worked out a good system with the fairly dorky but still workable disc printing software...

 

It is dorky looking, isn't it? But it works and is actually pretty flexible.

[blue2blue]

You bet.

I work with MS-Access 2003 (AKA 2002, they apparently couldn't make up their freakin' minds) on one job and the coding environment there has a couple nice features and some really stupid lacks... ditto for Macromedia -- excuse, me -- Adobe's Studio 8. I love the ability to color code the various bits... ON THE SCREEN... but print it out that way... who'd want to do that?!?

The single worst thing in MS's VB for Apps code interface, though, has GOT to be the fact that the scroll wheel DOESN'T WORK in the code view!!!

I can't begin to tell you how extraordinarily irritating that is. Here it was MS and their Natural Mouse (still my fave hand-rodent) that made the scroll wheel a fact of modern computer interface life -- and their own coding environment doesn't support it in the editor. WHY?!?!? The scroll wheel works elsewhere...

I had been bitching about that behavior in Access 2000 and just naturally assumed it would be taken care of in the subsequent version... Nah. That would make coding too f---ing easy, now, wouldn't it?


Where's the OLD QuickEdit when you need it?


BTW... this FPOS just failed printing another CD. That's one for one, today. Sigh.

Addendum... make that one for three. I just rebooted the printer and this time the CD-printing app locked up with the print driver half loaded. I f---in' love it.

Addendum to addendum: I just looked at the task manager... it would appear that this FPOS leaves service host instances scattered through ram like land mines. UN-freakin-believable.

Addendum 3... AHA! It would APPEAR that the any images you use in the CD/DVD HAVE to be B&W AND -- AND -- the background image adjustment page in the Epson disk printing app HAS to be SET TO B&W -- IF your printer is set to print 'only' B&W or IT ALL F---in' HANGS UP. (This DOESN'T Happen with other apps, like, say, printing a web page with color in it from IE, far as I can tell -- ONLY the EPSON CD printing app is so stupid it can't handle its own printer drivers.)

It took me FOUR ATTEMPTS to print this DVD... that is, I had to boot up the machine, stick the tray in, let it hang up... pull the tray out. Turn off the printer. Clear the EPSON drivers and print app. Restart the printer; wait for the printer to go through its incredibly long boot cycle. Put the tray back in and HAVE THE WHOLE PROCESS FAIL ALL OVER AGAIN.

Bloody f---ing lovely.

But after 15 minutes or so, I finally got the damn DVD printed. And it looks... fine.

[amplayer]

I've had my Epson R220 for a few days now, and here are my impressions.
1) Printing on CDs works pretty well. This printer is worth it just for that.
2) The print quality of black text and graphics is good but not great. I recently printed out a music score, and it was not the best printing I've seen from an inkjet. My $70 HP PSC1315 prints better quality for this.
3) The printer is dog slow compared to my $70 HP PSC1315.

I have not tried printing photos, so I can't comment on that.

Bottom line: If you need to print on CDs and/or DVDs, it's a bargain. Otherwise, get something else.

[Raymar]

blue,

This ink jet printable CDR took a whopping 2 minutes to print after clicking the print button in the EPSON Print CD program. It hardly took any ink at all, then after I printed it the Epson said to me, "Was that it? Come on let's print some more!!!".

Steve

[blue2blue]

Rub it in, rub it in.

Mine's apparently been sneaking out and reading its own press because it's been behaving especially poorly today.


Might as well run some one blue nine off onto that puppy as long as it's got such cool graphics.





amplayer -- I'm glad me and Steve didn't steer you too wong. See, it's the value of the marketplace of ideas. Between the happy Epson users and the unhappy ones we got a nuanced, if somewhat contradictory picture of what was up.


I'll say this, I'm pleased with just about every disc that I get printed.

[Scodiddly]

I had an Epson Stylus Photo something-or-other, and it worked fine. Took a lot of maintenance and ink to get the photo-quality printing, and I really didn't use it that often. So I had to run the unclog routine fairly often, etc.

 

Finally I just got tired of inkjets in general and bought a little Samsung laser for $200. B&W, always looks great and takes no maintence. OK, the original toner cartridge ran out pretty quick and the replacement was $70. But that was over a year ago and a goodly number of pages printed. And any decent laser is about 100 times faster than an inkjet.

[blue2blue]

Yeah, my next printer will undoubtedly be a laser. Color lasers are as low as a couple hundred bucks now. I don't really do photo printing as a rule so a color laser would probably be fine. OTOH... I haven't looked into color toner packs... maybe I'll just chew on that decision for awhile. No rush, anyhow. I try never to print anything if at all possible. Except, of course, for discs...

Epson R200 mood as of this a.m.: Two for two.