There are probably better printers out there
Written: Sep 14 '03
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Pros: None
Cons: Poor Mac compatibility, banding in printouts, somewhat awkward to get working properly.
The Bottom Line: I probably wouldn't recommend it to someone who is looking for a new printer, due to the compatibility issues and newer printers have better quality output.
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| sjasonsmith's Full Review: Epson Stylus Pro 9000 InkJet Printer |
We have had a Stylus Pro 9000 for a couple years now, and I have mixed opinions on it. To facilitate using this review, I am going to separate it into sub-headings.
Print Quality
From about 3 feet away, the print quality is exceptional. Up close, however, we always have slight banding--as is characteristic of many inkjets--and no matter how many times we clean on realign the print cartridges we cannot get them to go away. I have seen some newer HP's which do not have this effect at all. Even with the banding, the quality is exceptional for most of the work we do with it, which is short-term use posters.
Compatibility
When we switched our network to TCP/IP only, eliminating AppleTalk, printing to this printer from a Macintosh became a chore. It could only be done at the printer, connected via a serial port. When we upgraded all of our Macintoshes to OS X, dour capability to print to this printer was lost entirely, as there is no support in OS X for this printer. This could be overcome by utilizing a RIP which we could print PostScript to from the Macintosh, but this was too complex and expensive for our 'somewhat casual' use.
We now utilize Windows exclusively to print to this printer, and have had successful results. We have noticed, however, that the driver set up must be tweaked slightly in order to obtain successful results. When the driver is installed, the default values will not work well, it must be configured to print directly to the printer.
Ease of Use
This has been off and on for us. A year ago we dreaded ever having to use this printer, because it always seemed to stop in the middle of the print job, although this turned out to be because of the driver issue mentioned above. Now, it is not so bad, and we can consistently get it to print. There are some quirks with it, such as the fact that half the time it will not load roll paper if we have the cutter enabled--we must disable the cutter, load the paper, then enable the cutter again.
Aligning the print cartridges is a big negative for this printer as well, since in order to do it (fairly) quickly you must use small sheet paper. How many people with a 40 inch wide printer happen to keep 11x17 paper around it? If you do the alignment with roll paper, it prints the test patterns the whole width of the paper and takes a very long time.
Overall
This is not a bad printer. This is not a great printer. Being a fairly old model now, I am sure there are a lot of better printers out there you could buy.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 8000
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
sjasonsmith
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Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 1 member
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