Summary: great photos and a lot of complaints
Comment: I bought one of these because it was the only printer available off-the-shelf that prints 11x17. I need to print engineering drawings in B&W on 11x17. For the first 7 months, the printer was great. I even printed some digital photos on the sample paper that they gave, and the photos are absolutely gorgeous. The printer does spit through ink like there's no tomorrow, and the ink is expensive.
At about 7 months though, I began having problems. It seems like the printer is going through B&W ink at double speed. I get lines in my printouts, so I go to Epson's handy Nozzle Check and Head Cleaning parts of the driver software. I run the tests, do the Head Cleaning, and the results come out the same - at least 7 sections of the test pattern do not show up. I continue doing the same testing/head cleaning. The results get slightly better or slightly worse, but the machine never recovers. Finally, I go to the store and buy another ink cartridge and everything is fine afor about 2 weeks. Then I repeat the entire process. The ink level shows my cartridge as still being half full, but I still have to chunk it in the garbage and replace with a new one. So, now I have a ink-guzzling printer that is now guzzling ink at twice the normal speed.
Please note that I'm not printing heavy, black regions - simple lines and text nothing else.
HP really sucks, so I suppose that my next shot will be with Lexmark.
Well, enough procrastinating on my part - I'm off to the store to buy another ink cartridge.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Home Designer's Dream Machine
Comment: My wife runs a graphic design shop from our home, and has needed a new proofing printer for some time. I also wanted a printer that could handle large format photos that have been digitally enhanced. Our last Textronix printer cost us more than $10k, so we initially overlooked this printer since it's price was so low. However, when we reviewed all of the features, we decided that the price of this printer was a drop in the bucket if it could work for even simple proofs. We have been stunned and amazed at how incredible and color accurate the prints have turned out.
We use both Mac OS 9.x, and Win Me with this printer. To use design (postscript) apps like Quark, Illustrator, PageMaker, etc. we purchased the Epson Stylus Rip (since printer is raster-only). Prints are speedy and gorgeous at 720dpi, and the (much) slower 1440 are only marginally better looking. We purchased a wide spectrum of media (that ended up costing more than the printer). Duponts SuperB commercial paper is the most expensive, but is choice for selling to clients as proofs. We found it's important to choose paper settings provided by Epson to get the best quality prints.
Setup was relatively easy, and software works just fine. We love this printer.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Printer Terrible Software
Comment: It's slow, uses TONS of ink, and makes absolutely stunning prints--if you can figure out how to deal with the annoying driver settings.
I wasted a lot of paper and ink trying various settings before I came up with something that works. And you have to do the same testing and tweaking with each different paper you want to use.
I've gotten great results with Ilford Galerie Classic Gloss.
The big problem with this printer is that the print heads are part of the machine--i.e. they don't get replaced when you replace an ink cartridge, as with HP printers. Don't expect your print heads to last more than about two years with moderate use. And replacing them costs almost as much as a new printer.
But for the price, it's worth it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: epson printers weren't built to last
Comment: i purchased an epson 1280 printer a little under two years, it served me on an adequate basis, but ran into intermittent problems. and just recently, the printer completely died on me. i took it to an authorized service bureau and they told me the repairs would cost aroun $400. the inkheads needed to be replaced and the flat data cord needed to be swapped for a new one. thus i called epson and they told me all they could do is sell me another printer for $350. not the type of customer service you would expect from a "mutlimillion dollar" company. so they moral of the story goes i purchased a $500 dollar printer that lasted me only two years. if i knew this to begin with, i wouldn't have wasted my money on an epson product along with the countless amounts of wasted ink cartridges. a plea to epson, please build better products or at least try to accomodate the little people who help keep your company running. as for myself, i will never buy another epson product again. in my opinion, buy an hp.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Borderline Perfection!
Comment: If photographs are your true love, this is your printer of choice! I don't know where that "electronics fan" was coming from when he gave it one star (the star being that the printer turned on?), but he obviously never printed out that one in a million shot that we all aspire to! If you have that shot, this is the printer that will come through for you!