Customer Rating: 
Summary: A Complete Nightmare
Comment: The 4x6 paper cartridge for my trusty old Canon printer broke the other day. Being an amateur photographer, I print a lot of photos and the majority of those prints are 4x6. Since my Canon I900D is a few years old, and not realizing (duh!) that I could get a replacement 4x6 cartridge until too late, I went into printer shopping mode. I figured I would go for a higher end photo printer, with archival inks and better color and resolution. After doing a significant amount of research I decided upon the Epson Stylus Photo R2400. One of the things I made sure to check was whether the R2400 could print 4x6 photos, it does. Once I confirmed this capability I started looking for a good deal. When I found a refurbished printer on Epson's site for two thirds of the retail price, I went for it. I realized that I couldn't return it and that it may be missing the bundled software and paper samples but it seemed like a good deal. Boy was I wrong!
Epson Stylus Photo R2400The printer came after a few days in a massive box. I made room for the printer in my office and proceeded to install it. Right away I started having trouble. Since it was a new printer, I figured I just needed to become familiar with it and I began to play with it. I soon found out that it was very finicky. The printer and page setup settings had to be just right. I would print something, the job would be queued and sit there until the driver would give up and stop all jobs. If the right paper wasn't in the right tray no amount of coaxing would make the printer budge.
I became acquainted with the various trays for the printer and their requirements. It turns out that the thicker papers have to be fed through the manual/roll tray in the back of the printer. I then tried to print some large panoramas. I took some Epson 8.3x23.4 paper that I purchased some time back and put it in the manual tray. I had to create a custom size for the paper in page setup. Apparently Epson has dropped this panorama paper and the size isn't available in the printer driver anymore. I cropped and resized a nice panorama to fit the special paper and I printed it, or I thought I did. Again the printer sat there looking dumb. The paper was in the right tray and by then I had managed to print on regular letter paper so I knew I could print. So what was happening? I tried again and again with the same results the job would start and then sit in the queue until the queue was stopped. Frustrated I figured I would try printing some 4x6 prints instead. I kept having the same problem.
I tried troubleshooting the problem online. Epson has a troubleshooting guide on their support page that is supposed to walk you trough most problems. I have very bad luck with these guides. Since I have many years of experience using my computer and printing photos, I know the obvious things to try, making sure the printer is on and hooked up, making sure the software is installed, restart the computer and printer, check that the ink is installed properly, etcetera, etcetera, you get the idea. I didn't even get to try their guide; all I got was a blank page. I tried accessing the website with two other browsers, nada, no dice. I gave up trying the guide and sent tech support an email.
While waiting for a response, I started searching online for problems with the printer. It was there that I found out that there was a newer version of the printer driver. The one shipped with the printer was for PowerPC Macs, not Intel Macs. I downloaded the driver and read the installation instructions. I would not be able to install the new driver over the old one. The instructions said to remove the old drivers first, restart the computer and install the new one. Why the new drivers are not included on the software CD is beyond me. One simple test could tell the installer what kind of Mac I own and it could choose the appropriate one saving the customer a lot of hassle. I didn't realize it then, but saving the customer from hassle isn't a big priority at Epson.
I figured that the new driver would solve my problems, I was wrong. The large paper still refused to load and I could not produce any 4x6 prints from iPhoto. I then tried to print from Photoshop. Perhaps I'd have better luck there. I did manage to print 20 or 30 truly wonderful letter prints and some borderless 4x6 prints, but the larger paper sizes eluded me.
The next day I tried the online tool again as I had not received a response from tech support. Most of the help was useless suggestions but I did come up with one solution. You can't just put paper in the manual tray, that would be too easy; you have to push the paper forcefully enough past where it rests naturally. Then you have to put pressure on the paper in the manual tray until the printer grips the paper, otherwise the printer, not finding any paper in the tray, gives up. To print on large paper you have to click on all the dialogs and then turn to the printer and push the paper. This sounds easier than it is. The printer is very large, over two feet wide and weighing 34 pounds. Unless you have a sizeable desk, this baby is not sitting next to your computer. You have to move to the printer and hold the paper before the printer gives up trying to find it. Luckily I have a wireless mouse and I could click on the print button while I was near the printer. It was thus that I finally managed to print on 13x19 watercolor paper.
I now tried the panorama paper again. I managed to load it, hurray! But my joy was short lived; the printer left a 3 inch gap at the beginning of the paper and petered out slowly at the end leaving large uneven borders on what was to have been a borderless panorama. At least 20% of the paper was wasted, there was no joy in Mudville, I had struck out again.
FrustratedIt was now when I started having another problem. Printouts started showing ink stains. Somehow ink had leaked on the printing path and was staining the paper as it made its way through the printer. I contacted tech support again. They responded a day later with the helpful suggestion of cleaning my print head. Since the stains were produced by ink left on the print path, cleaning the print heads would be useless. I pointed this out this to tech support in my reply. They responded by suggesting I run thick paper through the printer until the excess ink was wiped off. I grabbed some paper towels and cleaned as much of the paper path as I could. That seems to have fixed the stains.
I gave up on the panoramas; I could live without that if need be. I had to be able to print 4x6 photos from iPhoto, that isn't an option. Although I could print borderless 4x6 prints from Photoshop, they had to be sent individually which is a big pain. iPhoto is very limited, but it is very useful for printing large batches of 4x6 prints, I wasn't going to give that up without a fight. I sent tech support an email asking for help in printing from iPhoto. A day later they replied with detailed instructions about cropping photos to the right size, selecting the right paper size in page setup and how to print photos from iPhoto. After taking a few deep breaths to calm down, I replied that I have extensive experience with iPhoto, and printing 4x6 prints that the problems wasn't my lack of familiarity with printing photos. A day later I received their reply telling me to reinstall the printer and resetting the printing system. I did as requested even though I had already reinstalled the printer driver with the Intel version appropriate for my Mac. I also reset the printing system, which erased all the print settings for all my printers, Epson or not. I lost settings that I use to make postscript files to distill into PDFs among other things, all of which have to be recreated from scratch. The fix allowed iPhoto to print on the Epson printer, but alas there was one more problem. The supposedly borderless prints had a 1/8th inch border on the top and left side. I sent tech support an email asking for help with this, days later I am still waiting for a response.
To make matters worse, if that was conceivable, the printer driver is extremely difficult to navigate. Epson suggests using Epson branded paper in order to get the best quality prints. The specific names of the current Epson papers show up in the print dialog. What makes this incredibly infuriating is that the page setup determines what paper options available to you within the print dialog. This makes some sense and is well intentioned but very poorly executed. I bought some Epson Ultra 4x6 Premium Glossy Photo Paper to print my photos. Even though I tried every possible page setup setting for 4x6 paper there is no way to select Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper in the print dialog. No matter what 4x6 option I select in page setup the Premium Glossy Photo Paper option is always grayed out. Only matte paper choices are available.
I regret ever having bought this printer; it has been nothing short of a nightmare getting it to work. I have produced some great prints, but the amount of hassle I have to deal with to produce a print is extremely aggravating for a printer that retails for $800. I made the mistake of buying a refurbished printer from Epson that means I cannot return it and get my money back. I am stuck with this large, expensive paper weight. I am going to attempt to get it fixed or replaced. I was given the number for customer relations. I am reticent to call them because of the hassle involved. I am tired of dealing with this printer and most of all of dealing with Epson. Lemons appear even in the best manufacturing facilities. I can understand that there may be occasional problems with a product but aside from the defects of this printer Epson isn't set up to deal with customer's problems effectively. The tech support personnel have a limited script to follow and know little about the products they support, If that wasn't bad enough, they are also slow to respond. Their lack of troubleshooting skills and the long response times make it extremely frustrating to deal with Epson tech support. After this nightmare I am reticent to buy another Epson product again. I may be stuck with this boat anchor of a printer, this albatross and I may have to absorb the loss of $500 plus the cost of extra ink cartridges but Epson has lost a customer for life.
Update: After much crying and gnashing of teeth I finally got a hold of an actual person at Epson. I spent three hours on the phone with two different tech support reps. We solved most of my remaining problems. The R2400 communicates with the computer and tells the printer driver what kind of ink is installed. If you have matte black (MK) ink, the driver will not allow you to select glossy paper. If you install the photo black (PK) ink, the driver then allows you to select glossy paper as well as matte paper. The problem is that this communication only happens when you launch the Epson Printer Utility, select your printer, click on status monitor and select the slot for matte/photo black ink. Until you force the driver to notice the change, it will not realize that the ink has changed and will not make the proper paper finishes available. You can switch ink cartridges back and forth as many times as you like, but until you manually check the ink levels for the MK/PK ink, the driver will not update the paper choices available to you in the print dialog.
The problem with the borders was harder to solve and am not 100% happy with the solution. During the three hours we tested many different settings. I was not able to reproduce the 1/8th inch border on the top and left sides of the photo that was happening previously while printing from iPhoto. When printing on matte paper from iPhoto and Photoshop, we got perfect borderless prints. Printing on glossy paper was a different story, in both apps I keep getting a very thin, tapering white border at the bottom of the paper. Why it should happen in glossy paper and not on matte wasn't answered. The only way to remove the border was in Photoshop. In the Photoshop print dialog you have to select scale to fit media. You may need to change the percentage of scaling until the point where the image is enlarged enough to cover that border, maybe, if you get lucky. So far my experimentation has given me unpredictable results. Sometimes I get a thin sliver of a border on one side of the paper, sometimes I don't. It seems to me that borderless 4x6 prints are much easier on my Canon I900D. I guess I am going to have to keep it around for 4x6 duties and use Moby Dick, a.k.a. Epson Stylus Photo R2400 for larger photos.
Customer Rating:
Summary: COMPLETE NIGHTMARE!!!
Comment: I owned the R2200 for three years and never had a single problem with it. I bought this piece of junk and it's been trouble literally from the first time I hooked it up. When it DOES print, the pictures are great but you have to reload the driver EVERY SINGLE TIME you change the ink or stop a document and half the time it doesn't recognize the correct black and doesn't give you the correct paper selections. I've downloaded the driver twice (including from the web) and the same problems again and again and again. And don't get me started on their tech support - you get some person who sounds like HAL from 2001 A Space Odyssey who doesn't have a clue how to help you.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Printer- but make sure you use it frequently.
Comment: The output quality from this semi-pro printer easily beats lab prints. Beautiful. The major downside to this printer (and most printers with built in print heads) is that you MUST use it weekly to prevent clogging. Especially if you live in a dry climate. Expect to spend serious money on ink to keep this printer running in top form.
If the print heads do clog- you will usually be able to unclog them using the software cleaning commands. But you will likely expend 30-50 dollars worth of ink cleaning a single head if it is severely clogged. I know because I followed Epson's cleaning instructions only to find ALL ink levels rapidly declining during the cleaning process. Epson R2400 ink is not cheap (with discount, over 105 US dollars for a set of all colors in 2007).
There are 3rd party solutions for maintaining clean heads - but they are not part of the Epson package you purchase, nor are they cheap.
Unless you print many photos consistently I would avoid this printer.
5 stars for quality prints; 2.5 stars for maintenance and ink costs.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing printer for serious photographers
Comment: My partner and I are professional artistic photographers, so the quality of our prints is extremely important to us. We recently purchased an R2400 and we've been THRILLED with the results. In the first four days of owning this printer, we printed a combination of over 100 prints (50+ @ 8.5x11, 40@ 4x6, 6 @ 11x14, 100 business cards, and several photo/text documents) on a variety of Epson papers (Ultra Premium Glossy, Premium Glossy, Premium Luster, Matte Presentation) and plain paper and we were universally delighted with the results, even when compared to images we've gotten from photo labs in the past. If you're serious about the quality of the prints you make, we strongly recommend the Epson R2400 and their line of 4 star and especially their 5 star papers. Results with a wide range of color and black and white prints were just fabulous.
Strengths - true, rich, bright colors, archival prints (long lasting, no fading), fast (8.5x11 less than 2 minutes, 11x14 less than 4 minutes), easy to use, and more.
Weaknesses - didn't include USB cable, but we already had spares ... perhaps they know most of us do, so that's why they don't include, but it does seem silly to sell a printer without the data cable.
I'm not sure I'd recommend this printer to folks who aren't serious about their photography ... it's not cheap, neither are the inks and it helps to know what you're doing when matching papers to printers, etc. If you're more into snapshots than high quality photography, this printer is probably more than you need. But for us, it's JUST PERFECT.
INKS - Yes, the inks aren't cheap, but we printed well over 100 prints and used only about 50% of the ink capacity of a single batch of cartridges, which seemed OK to us. And it's possible to purchase the inks for about half the typical price of fifteen dollars per cartridge if you look around a bit.
Customer Rating:
Summary: high quality printer
Comment: This is really a high quality printer. The reason why I bought this is because I am in college. What's more, I am deaf therefore I had to expect a communication breakdown with other students. So I ended up buying one for myself. They sent it and I got it the next day. It s so wonderful to print my homeworks! :)
Doe
Summary: A Complete Nightmare
Comment: The 4x6 paper cartridge for my trusty old Canon printer broke the other day. Being an amateur photographer, I print a lot of photos and the majority of those prints are 4x6. Since my Canon I900D is a few years old, and not realizing (duh!) that I could get a replacement 4x6 cartridge until too late, I went into printer shopping mode. I figured I would go for a higher end photo printer, with archival inks and better color and resolution. After doing a significant amount of research I decided upon the Epson Stylus Photo R2400. One of the things I made sure to check was whether the R2400 could print 4x6 photos, it does. Once I confirmed this capability I started looking for a good deal. When I found a refurbished printer on Epson's site for two thirds of the retail price, I went for it. I realized that I couldn't return it and that it may be missing the bundled software and paper samples but it seemed like a good deal. Boy was I wrong!
Epson Stylus Photo R2400The printer came after a few days in a massive box. I made room for the printer in my office and proceeded to install it. Right away I started having trouble. Since it was a new printer, I figured I just needed to become familiar with it and I began to play with it. I soon found out that it was very finicky. The printer and page setup settings had to be just right. I would print something, the job would be queued and sit there until the driver would give up and stop all jobs. If the right paper wasn't in the right tray no amount of coaxing would make the printer budge.
I became acquainted with the various trays for the printer and their requirements. It turns out that the thicker papers have to be fed through the manual/roll tray in the back of the printer. I then tried to print some large panoramas. I took some Epson 8.3x23.4 paper that I purchased some time back and put it in the manual tray. I had to create a custom size for the paper in page setup. Apparently Epson has dropped this panorama paper and the size isn't available in the printer driver anymore. I cropped and resized a nice panorama to fit the special paper and I printed it, or I thought I did. Again the printer sat there looking dumb. The paper was in the right tray and by then I had managed to print on regular letter paper so I knew I could print. So what was happening? I tried again and again with the same results the job would start and then sit in the queue until the queue was stopped. Frustrated I figured I would try printing some 4x6 prints instead. I kept having the same problem.
I tried troubleshooting the problem online. Epson has a troubleshooting guide on their support page that is supposed to walk you trough most problems. I have very bad luck with these guides. Since I have many years of experience using my computer and printing photos, I know the obvious things to try, making sure the printer is on and hooked up, making sure the software is installed, restart the computer and printer, check that the ink is installed properly, etcetera, etcetera, you get the idea. I didn't even get to try their guide; all I got was a blank page. I tried accessing the website with two other browsers, nada, no dice. I gave up trying the guide and sent tech support an email.
While waiting for a response, I started searching online for problems with the printer. It was there that I found out that there was a newer version of the printer driver. The one shipped with the printer was for PowerPC Macs, not Intel Macs. I downloaded the driver and read the installation instructions. I would not be able to install the new driver over the old one. The instructions said to remove the old drivers first, restart the computer and install the new one. Why the new drivers are not included on the software CD is beyond me. One simple test could tell the installer what kind of Mac I own and it could choose the appropriate one saving the customer a lot of hassle. I didn't realize it then, but saving the customer from hassle isn't a big priority at Epson.
I figured that the new driver would solve my problems, I was wrong. The large paper still refused to load and I could not produce any 4x6 prints from iPhoto. I then tried to print from Photoshop. Perhaps I'd have better luck there. I did manage to print 20 or 30 truly wonderful letter prints and some borderless 4x6 prints, but the larger paper sizes eluded me.
The next day I tried the online tool again as I had not received a response from tech support. Most of the help was useless suggestions but I did come up with one solution. You can't just put paper in the manual tray, that would be too easy; you have to push the paper forcefully enough past where it rests naturally. Then you have to put pressure on the paper in the manual tray until the printer grips the paper, otherwise the printer, not finding any paper in the tray, gives up. To print on large paper you have to click on all the dialogs and then turn to the printer and push the paper. This sounds easier than it is. The printer is very large, over two feet wide and weighing 34 pounds. Unless you have a sizeable desk, this baby is not sitting next to your computer. You have to move to the printer and hold the paper before the printer gives up trying to find it. Luckily I have a wireless mouse and I could click on the print button while I was near the printer. It was thus that I finally managed to print on 13x19 watercolor paper.
I now tried the panorama paper again. I managed to load it, hurray! But my joy was short lived; the printer left a 3 inch gap at the beginning of the paper and petered out slowly at the end leaving large uneven borders on what was to have been a borderless panorama. At least 20% of the paper was wasted, there was no joy in Mudville, I had struck out again.
FrustratedIt was now when I started having another problem. Printouts started showing ink stains. Somehow ink had leaked on the printing path and was staining the paper as it made its way through the printer. I contacted tech support again. They responded a day later with the helpful suggestion of cleaning my print head. Since the stains were produced by ink left on the print path, cleaning the print heads would be useless. I pointed this out this to tech support in my reply. They responded by suggesting I run thick paper through the printer until the excess ink was wiped off. I grabbed some paper towels and cleaned as much of the paper path as I could. That seems to have fixed the stains.
I gave up on the panoramas; I could live without that if need be. I had to be able to print 4x6 photos from iPhoto, that isn't an option. Although I could print borderless 4x6 prints from Photoshop, they had to be sent individually which is a big pain. iPhoto is very limited, but it is very useful for printing large batches of 4x6 prints, I wasn't going to give that up without a fight. I sent tech support an email asking for help in printing from iPhoto. A day later they replied with detailed instructions about cropping photos to the right size, selecting the right paper size in page setup and how to print photos from iPhoto. After taking a few deep breaths to calm down, I replied that I have extensive experience with iPhoto, and printing 4x6 prints that the problems wasn't my lack of familiarity with printing photos. A day later I received their reply telling me to reinstall the printer and resetting the printing system. I did as requested even though I had already reinstalled the printer driver with the Intel version appropriate for my Mac. I also reset the printing system, which erased all the print settings for all my printers, Epson or not. I lost settings that I use to make postscript files to distill into PDFs among other things, all of which have to be recreated from scratch. The fix allowed iPhoto to print on the Epson printer, but alas there was one more problem. The supposedly borderless prints had a 1/8th inch border on the top and left side. I sent tech support an email asking for help with this, days later I am still waiting for a response.
To make matters worse, if that was conceivable, the printer driver is extremely difficult to navigate. Epson suggests using Epson branded paper in order to get the best quality prints. The specific names of the current Epson papers show up in the print dialog. What makes this incredibly infuriating is that the page setup determines what paper options available to you within the print dialog. This makes some sense and is well intentioned but very poorly executed. I bought some Epson Ultra 4x6 Premium Glossy Photo Paper to print my photos. Even though I tried every possible page setup setting for 4x6 paper there is no way to select Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper in the print dialog. No matter what 4x6 option I select in page setup the Premium Glossy Photo Paper option is always grayed out. Only matte paper choices are available.
I regret ever having bought this printer; it has been nothing short of a nightmare getting it to work. I have produced some great prints, but the amount of hassle I have to deal with to produce a print is extremely aggravating for a printer that retails for $800. I made the mistake of buying a refurbished printer from Epson that means I cannot return it and get my money back. I am stuck with this large, expensive paper weight. I am going to attempt to get it fixed or replaced. I was given the number for customer relations. I am reticent to call them because of the hassle involved. I am tired of dealing with this printer and most of all of dealing with Epson. Lemons appear even in the best manufacturing facilities. I can understand that there may be occasional problems with a product but aside from the defects of this printer Epson isn't set up to deal with customer's problems effectively. The tech support personnel have a limited script to follow and know little about the products they support, If that wasn't bad enough, they are also slow to respond. Their lack of troubleshooting skills and the long response times make it extremely frustrating to deal with Epson tech support. After this nightmare I am reticent to buy another Epson product again. I may be stuck with this boat anchor of a printer, this albatross and I may have to absorb the loss of $500 plus the cost of extra ink cartridges but Epson has lost a customer for life.
Update: After much crying and gnashing of teeth I finally got a hold of an actual person at Epson. I spent three hours on the phone with two different tech support reps. We solved most of my remaining problems. The R2400 communicates with the computer and tells the printer driver what kind of ink is installed. If you have matte black (MK) ink, the driver will not allow you to select glossy paper. If you install the photo black (PK) ink, the driver then allows you to select glossy paper as well as matte paper. The problem is that this communication only happens when you launch the Epson Printer Utility, select your printer, click on status monitor and select the slot for matte/photo black ink. Until you force the driver to notice the change, it will not realize that the ink has changed and will not make the proper paper finishes available. You can switch ink cartridges back and forth as many times as you like, but until you manually check the ink levels for the MK/PK ink, the driver will not update the paper choices available to you in the print dialog.
The problem with the borders was harder to solve and am not 100% happy with the solution. During the three hours we tested many different settings. I was not able to reproduce the 1/8th inch border on the top and left sides of the photo that was happening previously while printing from iPhoto. When printing on matte paper from iPhoto and Photoshop, we got perfect borderless prints. Printing on glossy paper was a different story, in both apps I keep getting a very thin, tapering white border at the bottom of the paper. Why it should happen in glossy paper and not on matte wasn't answered. The only way to remove the border was in Photoshop. In the Photoshop print dialog you have to select scale to fit media. You may need to change the percentage of scaling until the point where the image is enlarged enough to cover that border, maybe, if you get lucky. So far my experimentation has given me unpredictable results. Sometimes I get a thin sliver of a border on one side of the paper, sometimes I don't. It seems to me that borderless 4x6 prints are much easier on my Canon I900D. I guess I am going to have to keep it around for 4x6 duties and use Moby Dick, a.k.a. Epson Stylus Photo R2400 for larger photos.
Customer Rating:
Summary: COMPLETE NIGHTMARE!!!
Comment: I owned the R2200 for three years and never had a single problem with it. I bought this piece of junk and it's been trouble literally from the first time I hooked it up. When it DOES print, the pictures are great but you have to reload the driver EVERY SINGLE TIME you change the ink or stop a document and half the time it doesn't recognize the correct black and doesn't give you the correct paper selections. I've downloaded the driver twice (including from the web) and the same problems again and again and again. And don't get me started on their tech support - you get some person who sounds like HAL from 2001 A Space Odyssey who doesn't have a clue how to help you.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Printer- but make sure you use it frequently.
Comment: The output quality from this semi-pro printer easily beats lab prints. Beautiful. The major downside to this printer (and most printers with built in print heads) is that you MUST use it weekly to prevent clogging. Especially if you live in a dry climate. Expect to spend serious money on ink to keep this printer running in top form.
If the print heads do clog- you will usually be able to unclog them using the software cleaning commands. But you will likely expend 30-50 dollars worth of ink cleaning a single head if it is severely clogged. I know because I followed Epson's cleaning instructions only to find ALL ink levels rapidly declining during the cleaning process. Epson R2400 ink is not cheap (with discount, over 105 US dollars for a set of all colors in 2007).
There are 3rd party solutions for maintaining clean heads - but they are not part of the Epson package you purchase, nor are they cheap.
Unless you print many photos consistently I would avoid this printer.
5 stars for quality prints; 2.5 stars for maintenance and ink costs.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing printer for serious photographers
Comment: My partner and I are professional artistic photographers, so the quality of our prints is extremely important to us. We recently purchased an R2400 and we've been THRILLED with the results. In the first four days of owning this printer, we printed a combination of over 100 prints (50+ @ 8.5x11, 40@ 4x6, 6 @ 11x14, 100 business cards, and several photo/text documents) on a variety of Epson papers (Ultra Premium Glossy, Premium Glossy, Premium Luster, Matte Presentation) and plain paper and we were universally delighted with the results, even when compared to images we've gotten from photo labs in the past. If you're serious about the quality of the prints you make, we strongly recommend the Epson R2400 and their line of 4 star and especially their 5 star papers. Results with a wide range of color and black and white prints were just fabulous.
Strengths - true, rich, bright colors, archival prints (long lasting, no fading), fast (8.5x11 less than 2 minutes, 11x14 less than 4 minutes), easy to use, and more.
Weaknesses - didn't include USB cable, but we already had spares ... perhaps they know most of us do, so that's why they don't include, but it does seem silly to sell a printer without the data cable.
I'm not sure I'd recommend this printer to folks who aren't serious about their photography ... it's not cheap, neither are the inks and it helps to know what you're doing when matching papers to printers, etc. If you're more into snapshots than high quality photography, this printer is probably more than you need. But for us, it's JUST PERFECT.
INKS - Yes, the inks aren't cheap, but we printed well over 100 prints and used only about 50% of the ink capacity of a single batch of cartridges, which seemed OK to us. And it's possible to purchase the inks for about half the typical price of fifteen dollars per cartridge if you look around a bit.
Customer Rating:
Summary: high quality printer
Comment: This is really a high quality printer. The reason why I bought this is because I am in college. What's more, I am deaf therefore I had to expect a communication breakdown with other students. So I ended up buying one for myself. They sent it and I got it the next day. It s so wonderful to print my homeworks! :)
Doe