In our little home office, we've been using an Epson Pro XL printer for over 5 years. It's coming to the end of its useful life. After lots of research (intermittently spanning 2 years), we decided to buy an Epson Stylus 3000 printer, along with Epson?s $200 firewire card (so that we could hook it up directly to our new Mac without the ancient print server). The 3000, being somewhat old (though we bought it new), only comes standard with serial and parallel ports. The firewire card was sold under the pretext of being compatible with the 3000. Unfortunately, the Postscript software provided by Epson (necessary for actually making the printer print legibly) is not compatible with Epson?s firewire card. This incompatibility, as far as I can tell after hours of research, is not listed anywhere on their website or any other sales literature. Additionally, I called their pre-sales 800 number and was told that it was compatible. This was either an ignorant mistake or an overt lie. Epson knows that these products are incompatible, and their failure to disclose this information is not only negligent but fraudulent. This incompatibility was discussed roughly 5 years ago (about their equally useless Ethernet card) in web messages that I have recently discovered after a lot of searching. There is no way that Epson didn't know what they were up to. Epson's only motive as far as I can ascertain is to sell more cards and printers so they could make more money. Selling products that actually work doesn't seem to fit with their business plan.
I've even recently been informed by a printer technician that there is yet one more undocumented maintainance problem. The waste ink tank will fill up in somewhere between 3 months and 3 years. It is strangely not replaceable by the consumer. There is no mention of it anywhere on their site or in their manuals. Since I paid to have the privilege of talking to Epson tech support, I was advised that the way to fix the bug I was working on was to reset the printer to defaults (also undocumented). This, my local printer guy tells me, also resets the waste ink counter, so now it's possible that the tank will overflow and destroy the printer and/or my office.
If a device that you just bought doesn't work straight out of the box, and through no fault of your own, you should not have to pay for the privilege to ask the people that made it why it doesn't work. Putting a bunch of generic, misleading and intentionally incomplete information on the web does not fulfill a company?s obligation to its customers. Any business should be more than just a tool to extract money from its customers.
I own an Epson 1520 printer, and when I bought it, in 1998, it was truly the best option for midsize prints. The cartridges were big and economical, the print quality was great, and it came with good ColorSync profiles.
I speak in the past tense, because Epson has not provided us with a lot of drivers for OS X, which, may I chime in, truly sucks the big one. I was 'forced' to buy a C70 for my Mac prints, and have since used a PC for the larger prints, since the 1520 is fully supported on the dark side. You'd think Epson/Seiko would show some sign of appreciation for the people that have always been good customers, but noooo; I'm still amazed at the amount of printers that are not supported in OS X, even though they were introduced when OS X was already released.
Epson's printers don't entirely suck. They are more or less cheap for their capacity (esp. in large format). But their customer support, tech support, and development is truly awful. It's really to the point that it seems self-destructive. Why would these people crap on their customers with such abandon? Are they going to sell out to someone who doesn't care about their reputation?
Are we really willing to take it up the you_know_where and not do something about it ? I, for one, am going to pursue this with my state Attorney General. This seems to be the best place for the resolution of any consumer problem. I would encourage all you other digustees to do the same.
--
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
For my office I authorized purchase of the PM3000c and the new PM4000cx. Both work fine in OS X. The 4000 is awesome. It uses a newer pigment technology. The prints are beautiful and they don't have the feel of coming from an inkjet printer. The blacks are particularly good. We can print small Japanese characters (about 2mm high) and they look perfect.
At home we have the PM3500c. This works fine in both OS 9 and OS X.
All of these are large format A3 size printers. I think the PM3000 was discontinued some time before OS X came out but Epson still provided a driver for it.
Is HP still good for printing black text? Years ago I thought they had the sharpest black text. The recent samples I saw in the store looked a tad grey and a tad fuzzy.
Okay - I took my Epson C80 back to the Apple Store and asked that they either make the thing work or credit my account. They made it work (God Bless the Genius Bar!).
Apparently installing the drivers with other USB devices plugged into the iMac can screw things up. Who knew? So when I unplugged everything and took the printer and iMac to the store, that did the trick.
For the moment I'm warily eyeing my C80 , which now insists on functioning flawlessly. Personally, I think it's just waiting for an opportune moment to crap out.
Based on the above, I also got my Orange Micro iBot to finally work by unplugging all USB devices prior to installing the iBot driver, even though the iBot is a Firewire device.
Maybe I've got a gimp USB controller or something. It seems I can't install anything (and expect it to work properly) without unplugging all USB devices (except keyboard/mouse) first. Anyone else experienced this?
Running OS X 10.1.4 on a LCD iMac.
Now if I could just get my machine to sleep properly, iDisk sped up, and that annoying but minor pro speaker hiss to disappear.... <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
Now if I could just get my machine to sleep properly, iDisk sped up, and that annoying but minor pro speaker hiss to disappear.... <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
</strong><hr></blockquote>
10.1.5 should resolve much of your iDisk speed issues when it is finally released.
I hear you Escher--I have a Epson 5700i as well, and apparently because we spent a lot more than people with inkjets we are never going to recieve a driver. I find it hard to believe that I still can't print from it. If 10.2 doesn't solve my issues & there is still no driver, I'm buying a new one.
Okay - I took my Epson C80 back to the Apple Store and asked that they either make the thing work or credit my account. They made it work (God Bless the Genius Bar!).
Apparently installing the drivers with other USB devices plugged into the iMac can screw things up. Who knew? So when I unplugged everything and took the printer and iMac to the store, that did the trick.
For the moment I'm warily eyeing my C80 , which now insists on functioning flawlessly. Personally, I think it's just waiting for an opportune moment to crap out.
Based on the above, I also got my Orange Micro iBot to finally work by unplugging all USB devices prior to installing the iBot driver, even though the iBot is a Firewire device.
Maybe I've got a gimp USB controller or something. It seems I can't install anything (and expect it to work properly) without unplugging all USB devices (except keyboard/mouse) first. Anyone else experienced this?
Running OS X 10.1.4 on a LCD iMac.
Now if I could just get my machine to sleep properly, iDisk sped up, and that annoying but minor pro speaker hiss to disappear....
[ 05-30-2002: Message edited by: gobble gobble ]
<hr></blockquote>
Anyone have any info on this? Will 10.1.5 fix this nasty sounding bug? Or will we have to wait for 10.2 (the whole summer, no thank you)
Anyhow, so do Epsons print better for photos on glossies in inkjets?
for F-R-E-E!!! just got sick of waiting for X drivers.
i will admit that the colors looked more vivid on the epson using photo paper of course, but my HP960 is very sharp and even prints very well on plain paper, and using the crappiest settings. i compared a text page that i had printed out on the 700 and nearly fell over laughing. adios, epson!
<strong>because we spent a lot more than people with inkjets we are never going to recieve a driver.</strong><hr></blockquote>
mrmister: The problem is that even though we spent a lot more than people who bought (consumer) inkjets, we spent a lot less than people who got HP lasers. I bought my EPL-5700i right after it came out for $350, when HP's cheapest laser was $600 (and still is, beside the POS 1000 series). People who weren't cheap like me and got an HP, which uses PostScript, have been able to print with Apple's PS driver since the Public Beta.
At this point, I'm thinking about getting a Brother HL-1670N with PS, Ethernet, duplexing and fancy web admin for $700 instead of a non-Ethernet HP 2200dse at similar price. I just wonder whether getting a Brother instead of an HP could turn out to be the same fatal shortcut as getting the Epson over an HP 3 years ago was.
See this <a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=000052" target="_blank">thread in the Genius forum</a> for an excellent discussion of network laser printers (including countless comments from yours truly). Wish I had the money for an HP 2200DN! But at $1200, I could almost get a new iBook/700 or a low-end PowerMac instead.
Comments
I've even recently been informed by a printer technician that there is yet one more undocumented maintainance problem. The waste ink tank will fill up in somewhere between 3 months and 3 years. It is strangely not replaceable by the consumer. There is no mention of it anywhere on their site or in their manuals. Since I paid to have the privilege of talking to Epson tech support, I was advised that the way to fix the bug I was working on was to reset the printer to defaults (also undocumented). This, my local printer guy tells me, also resets the waste ink counter, so now it's possible that the tank will overflow and destroy the printer and/or my office.
If a device that you just bought doesn't work straight out of the box, and through no fault of your own, you should not have to pay for the privilege to ask the people that made it why it doesn't work. Putting a bunch of generic, misleading and intentionally incomplete information on the web does not fulfill a company?s obligation to its customers. Any business should be more than just a tool to extract money from its customers.
I speak in the past tense, because Epson has not provided us with a lot of drivers for OS X, which, may I chime in, truly sucks the big one. I was 'forced' to buy a C70 for my Mac prints, and have since used a PC for the larger prints, since the 1520 is fully supported on the dark side. You'd think Epson/Seiko would show some sign of appreciation for the people that have always been good customers, but noooo; I'm still amazed at the amount of printers that are not supported in OS X, even though they were introduced when OS X was already released.
Boo, Epson.
Epson's printers don't entirely suck. They are more or less cheap for their capacity (esp. in large format). But their customer support, tech support, and development is truly awful. It's really to the point that it seems self-destructive. Why would these people crap on their customers with such abandon? Are they going to sell out to someone who doesn't care about their reputation?
Are we really willing to take it up the you_know_where and not do something about it ? I, for one, am going to pursue this with my state Attorney General. This seems to be the best place for the resolution of any consumer problem. I would encourage all you other digustees to do the same.
--
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
? Edmund Burke
At home we have the PM3500c. This works fine in both OS 9 and OS X.
All of these are large format A3 size printers. I think the PM3000 was discontinued some time before OS X came out but Epson still provided a driver for it.
Is HP still good for printing black text? Years ago I thought they had the sharpest black text. The recent samples I saw in the store looked a tad grey and a tad fuzzy.
It did come with OS 9 drivers, but I hunted down some OS X drivers, and haven't looked back.
Apparently installing the drivers with other USB devices plugged into the iMac can screw things up. Who knew? So when I unplugged everything and took the printer and iMac to the store, that did the trick.
For the moment I'm warily eyeing my C80 , which now insists on functioning flawlessly. Personally, I think it's just waiting for an opportune moment to crap out.
Based on the above, I also got my Orange Micro iBot to finally work by unplugging all USB devices prior to installing the iBot driver, even though the iBot is a Firewire device.
Maybe I've got a gimp USB controller or something. It seems I can't install anything (and expect it to work properly) without unplugging all USB devices (except keyboard/mouse) first. Anyone else experienced this?
Running OS X 10.1.4 on a LCD iMac.
Now if I could just get my machine to sleep properly, iDisk sped up, and that annoying but minor pro speaker hiss to disappear.... <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
[ 05-30-2002: Message edited by: gobble gobble ]</p>
<strong>
Running OS X 10.1.4 on a LCD iMac.
Now if I could just get my machine to sleep properly, iDisk sped up, and that annoying but minor pro speaker hiss to disappear.... <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
</strong><hr></blockquote>
10.1.5 should resolve much of your iDisk speed issues when it is finally released.
i've got a bt alacatel adsl modem....
bt REALLY suck !
BT = DEVIL.
Okay - I took my Epson C80 back to the Apple Store and asked that they either make the thing work or credit my account. They made it work (God Bless the Genius Bar!).
Apparently installing the drivers with other USB devices plugged into the iMac can screw things up. Who knew? So when I unplugged everything and took the printer and iMac to the store, that did the trick.
For the moment I'm warily eyeing my C80 , which now insists on functioning flawlessly. Personally, I think it's just waiting for an opportune moment to crap out.
Based on the above, I also got my Orange Micro iBot to finally work by unplugging all USB devices prior to installing the iBot driver, even though the iBot is a Firewire device.
Maybe I've got a gimp USB controller or something. It seems I can't install anything (and expect it to work properly) without unplugging all USB devices (except keyboard/mouse) first. Anyone else experienced this?
Running OS X 10.1.4 on a LCD iMac.
Now if I could just get my machine to sleep properly, iDisk sped up, and that annoying but minor pro speaker hiss to disappear....
[ 05-30-2002: Message edited by: gobble gobble ]
<hr></blockquote>
Anyone have any info on this? Will 10.1.5 fix this nasty sounding bug? Or will we have to wait for 10.2 (the whole summer, no thank you)
Anyhow, so do Epsons print better for photos on glossies in inkjets?
for F-R-E-E!!! just got sick of waiting for X drivers.
i will admit that the colors looked more vivid on the epson using photo paper of course, but my HP960 is very sharp and even prints very well on plain paper, and using the crappiest settings. i compared a text page that i had printed out on the 700 and nearly fell over laughing. adios, epson!
I don't actually have DSL any more, but I originally got DSL in Fall 1999 and it lasted two years of 24/7 usage (static IPs were the norm back then.)
The C80 s a little loud I guess, but it's fast and prints everything I throw at it to my satisfaction.
<strong>because we spent a lot more than people with inkjets we are never going to recieve a driver.</strong><hr></blockquote>
mrmister: The problem is that even though we spent a lot more than people who bought (consumer) inkjets, we spent a lot less than people who got HP lasers. I bought my EPL-5700i right after it came out for $350, when HP's cheapest laser was $600 (and still is, beside the POS 1000 series). People who weren't cheap like me and got an HP, which uses PostScript, have been able to print with Apple's PS driver since the Public Beta.
At this point, I'm thinking about getting a Brother HL-1670N with PS, Ethernet, duplexing and fancy web admin for $700 instead of a non-Ethernet HP 2200dse at similar price. I just wonder whether getting a Brother instead of an HP could turn out to be the same fatal shortcut as getting the Epson over an HP 3 years ago was.
See this <a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=000052" target="_blank">thread in the Genius forum</a> for an excellent discussion of network laser printers (including countless comments from yours truly). Wish I had the money for an HP 2200DN! But at $1200, I could almost get a new iBook/700 or a low-end PowerMac instead.
Escher
[ 06-01-2002: Message edited by: Escher ]</p>