what the **** is up with epson?

[krossfyter]

do they even support 10.3.8?

i have a c60 printer and its really killing me... utiltiy doesnt show up and the printer started acting slow as hell. now i cant even print anything. i have two of these printers by the way... same issue ever since i moved to panther.


im ditching epson so i need to by a new printer now... what do you suggest?
cannon?

who supports current mac osx 3.8?

i need something comparable to the c60 price wise if possible.


i tried getting the driver from the epson site to fix this problem but they arent even up to date... so i guess i have to switch now. what the **** is up with epson? they used to be good.

 

[ct77]

what the **** is up with epson? they used to be good.

I can't really help w/ recommendations, but I can commiserate. I've had an Epson Perfection 1250 scanner since 2002, and only just recently did Epson release decent drivers.

I'm definitely buying Canon or some other brand for printers and scanners in the future.

P.S.: Though I don't think OS X is the only loser with Epson -- we have the same scanner (Perfection 1250) here where I work -- it's hooked up to Windows -- and it doesn't work AT ALL. On any computer. The Epson software always claims another application is using the scanner and that it can't open. Of course no other app is running. And the fix? A lot of uninstalling and messing with the Windows registry. So then again... maybe I don't feel too bad about how my Epson scanner has been working w/ OS X.

 

[noel4r]

I’ve stopped buying Epson products since buying one of their printers a few years ago. I was only able to print about 20 pages before the ink ran out. Bought another cartridge and it did the same thing. Apparently, they sell their printers at a loss and make their money on the ink cartridges. So never again….

 

[0490043]

im ditching epson so i need to by a new printer now... what do you suggest?
cannon?

If I were you, I would get an Hp printer. I had Epsons for the longest time, but about a year and a half ago I had enough with Epson. I bought a Hp because it came highly recommended. Its reliable and was a good price.

 

[Celeron]

I hate Epson. I would recommend getting an HP printer. The main problem, at least with the Epson I had, was that when it runs out of ink you simply drop a new ink tank into it. The print head never gets replaced, never gets cleaned. With HP printers the print head comes with the ink so its new every time you replace it.

 

[Gee]

I’ve stopped buying Epson products since buying one of their printers a few years ago. I was only able to print about 20 pages before the ink ran out. Bought another cartridge and it did the same thing. Apparently, they sell their printers at a loss and make their money on the ink cartridges. So never again….

Out of interest, all printers, whether by epson, hp, cannon, or whoever, are all sold on this model - they lose money on the hardware (big time) and hope you buy it back on the ink. These chaps make apple's margins look slim.

For instance, an olympic swimming pool of HP printer ink would be worth...$5.9 billion dollars. That's billion, not million.

 

[rkphoto]

I have a Epson 2200 and have had no problems. Epson has always had the highest photo print quality, it's basically the standard in the photo industry. I did buy one of their scanners and had major problems with the driver. But my printer has worked perfectly in all variations of OSX from 10.1 to 10.3.8.

 

[mkrishnan]

Doesn't the C60 have built-in OS X drivers? My C84 has never given me any trouble. I didn't have to install anything. I plugged it into my AEBS and it just worked.

I don't have an OS X compatible scanner, but I thought that, since the 1250 is on the OS X ICA support list, it should work without drivers using ICA, at the very least. Is this not true?

I'm sorry you are all having such negative experiences with Epson....

 

[hob]

An olympic swimming pool of HP printer ink would be worth...$5.9 billion dollars. That's billion, not million.

Where'd you get this figure from? (Just curious!) If so, the situation is even more dire than I thought!

I've always gone with HP if I had the choice... Still using a 5 year old Deskjet 880C, and my little brother was using my old serial-interface 660C until i switched him and serial ports became redundant! Those babys last!

 

[bousozoku]

I'm extremely happy with the way Epson's drivers are working for me. There were a lot of updates for Mac OS X and from 10.3 until 10.3.4, my SC900 wouldn't print, but that was Apple's fault, as the printer started working after the operating system update.

I now have a CX6400 all-in-one and scanning, printing, and the card reader all work fine with 10.3.8.

 

[jaw04005]

I've had both an Epson C80 and 2200. Extremely satisfied with both, although the 2200's drivers didn't support the trim/cut feature.

I currently use a Canon S9000 and HP Laserjet 1012, which both work great.

 

[stoid]

I would like to counter that, and say that I am rather pleased with my Epson C84 purchase. It has always worked flawlessly (though I can't get the utility to work wireless from the AEx so I have to plug it directly to see ink levels, run cleaning cycles, etc. but I think that this might be an Apple problem and not Epson)

Anyway, after about 10 months, the Magenta and Yellow inks clogged, and no cleaning the heads fixed it. I figured it was a problem with the cheap eBay'ed cartridges and since color printing wasn't too big a deal at the time (mostly papers for school) I didn't feel like blowing the $30+ to get genuine Epson cartridges. Late February, 3 days before the 30 day grace period of the 1 year warrantee I had finally need color, and the new cartridges didn't work. I called Epson support, and now have a brand new C84 with a fresh set of cartridges on the house. Shipped overnight, I couldn't be more thrilled. The printer performs like a champ and is very ink efficient. I would recommend the Epson C84 to anyone.

 

[Gee]

Where'd you get this figure from? (Just curious!) If so, the situation is even more dire than I thought!

It was in The Guardian or Observer a couple of weeks back, in a piece on HP and its empire, and the sacking of Carly whatsherface...

 

[kanker]

I'll never buy an Epson product again. The last 2 Epson printers I bought broke on me within a year, and it's not like I was doing that much printing. Junk if you ask me. I went HP this last time, and will probably do so for the foreseeable future.

 

[DeSnousa]

Ive got a epson and its great. As with the ink issue i get roughly 100-150 pages from my black ink cartidge.

 

[Jon'sLightBulbs]

I feel this entire thread's pain. When you, OP, buy again though, do yourself a favor and buy laser. The per page cost is immensely lower, and instead of printing 20, 50, 100, or 200 pages of text, you'll get thousands out of a toner cartridge. The toner cartridge will be more expensive, but certainly not proportionally more expensive. Again, the per page cost will be much lower than an inkjet.

And since Epson doesn't do laser, you'll avail yourself of the driver headache right off the bat.

 

[Maxiseller]

Laser is the way to go for sure.

I run a small business and so most of the printing I do is of course letters and other essentials to communicating - a steady laser does the job way better than any inkjet could.

On the other hand, I've brought a C66 for my mac. Now in theory, they aren't supported by Mac which, as you can appreciate was a bit of a pain - the epson website just entirely ignores Mac's existance for this printer however i found a great little App called GimpPrint that emulated the driver (or somthing) to work with OSX and it works like a dream!

The problem is, that it's still Epson. The 18ml (around) Black ink tank costs near to £22 pounds (Around $35-38) whereas you can get a HP ink WITH a built in head for the same costs that holds TWICE as much ink. I really should have done the match before purchase. That said, it appears even HP are now cutting down on the size of their ink tanks - the latest printers look shoddily built, and comprise of inks no larger than a grape. It looks like its all about profit...

 

[mkrishnan]

I feel this entire thread's pain. When you, OP, buy again though, do yourself a favor and buy laser. The per page cost is immensely lower, and instead of printing 20, 50, 100, or 200 pages of text, you'll get thousands out of a toner cartridge. The toner cartridge will be more expensive, but certainly not proportionally more expensive. Again, the per page cost will be much lower than an inkjet.

This part I'll certainly buy into. Unless you're really into printing photos or something like that. The only reason I have an inkjet is that the C84 (and mine works fine, as I said ) is that it was a freebie with my iBook. I would otherwise have stampeded right to a simple laser printer, since I almost always print school-related text and charts and other simple graphics, which don't need color. And lasers still do these kinds much better....

 

[spacepower7]

price of ink

I remember reading a year or two ago about the expensive ink in all the cheap HP, Canon, and Epson printers. Apparently these companies caught the attention of some EU consumer commision or whatever. Their conclusion was that the ink costs more per oz/ml than high-end French Champagne. They claimed to be starting an investigation. The consumer group also complained that the name brand printer papers were in collusion and price fixing.

I never heard what happened....?

 

[kiwi-in-uk]

And since Epson doesn't do laser, you'll avail yourself of the driver headache right off the bat.

Epson does do laser. We use a C900 (colour) at a client site (I had no chance to influence the purchasing decision). The trouble is that while the OSX driver works when directly connected, I can't seem to print via the Windows n/w and since time is money I stopped trying after about 6 hours. So I have to save PDFs to the Windows PC connected to the C900, and print from there. Painful. I have not had the same problems with HP or Canon colour laser printers.

I have had two Epson inkjet printers. Had driver and mechanical problems with both. The last one stopped working from both Windows and OSX after a few weeks. Epson did not want to know.

These days I usually buy Canon inkjet & laser - I know they will work, and work for a long time. Haven't tried HP recently, so can't comment.

 

[krossfyter]

thanks guys for the advice and opinions. So now considering a laser printer. Around how much are the toners? Any basic laser printer you all would recommend... probably would be a cannon or a hp... im guessing.

I hear they are pretty decent price now a days.

 

[jaw04005]

thanks guys for the advice and opinions. So now considering a laser printer. Around how much are the toners? Any basic laser printer you all would recommend... probably would be a cannon or a hp... im guessing.

I hear they are pretty decent price now a days.

Grayscale or Color? Love my HP Laserjet 1012. Purchased in late 2003, hasn't given me one bit of a problem and still on the original toner cartridge.. and I print all the time!

 

[krossfyter]

Grayscale or Color? Love my HP Laserjet 1012. Purchased in late 2003, hasn't given me one bit of a problem and still on the original toner cartridge.. and I print all the time!

color bro!

 

[krossfyter]

how bout this one....


link

 

[Balin64]

I've been using Epson 1200 series printers for a while... yes, I'm old school. This is why: they offered one of the first affordable large format Photo printers in the Epson 1200. It also had a USB port. That was huge. Remmeber that when we first started adopting the G4 tower the ADB port we all loved and considered a mate was GONE! The Epson 1200 I bought in 2001 is still serving me extremely well at home. At work, I use the exceptional SP 1280. A great machine. Yes, the SP 1200 drinks ink like it was 2 for 1's, but the quality is still the best I have seen in that era. The SP 1280 is just butta. Love them both. I need to get a 1280 for home. I love that printer. My opinion...