I am a draftsman that uses 2 of these printers to print proofs of my drawings (one at home and one at work). I currently use Windows 2000 and the parallel port at home and Windows 98 with the Epson USB adapter at work. Both printers have the same problems as described by JK Hudson - "paper misfeeds" and "drivers that freeze when you try to cancel a job". However, I feel loading the ink cartridges is simple enough.

The paper misfeeds are something that developed over time. It took about a year for the problems to become obvious and they seem to get worse with time. My home printer is the older and worse of the two. It is used mostly to print on 8.5 x 11 paper with the occasional 11 x 17. The work printer is used almost exclusively to print on 11 x 17 sheets. Both printers will take a sheet of paper, feed it thru without printing, and give me an out of paper error message. The one at home does this daily, the one at work does it weekly. At home, I will often have to re-feed the paper 4-5 times before I get a printout. One time, between the driver freezes and the paper mis-feeds, it took me half an hour to print a 1 page letter. Sometimes, the printers will not load the paper correctly, they think they have and print on the plastic paper guide inside them. This is a real pain to clean up. Other times, they will partially load a sheet of paper and then print the first two or three lines on the plastic inside and the rest on the paper.

The web tech support is not very good either. I wanted to get the updated driver for Windows 2000. I downloaded it from the site and the install instructions mentioned that I should download the Status Monitor and install it. There was no Status Monitor file on the download page, so I contacted tech support. Their first response sent me to a page for the Epson 750 (reminder… I have the 1520). Then I was told there was a driver, where I could find it and how to install it. The file did not exist on the web page they gave me. I found the file under a different printer and tried to install it. It did not work. Finally, I wrote a different technician and found out that the monitor does not work with Win2k. Also, the “Trouble Shooting” page has advice for the out of paper message. I tried all of it. It didn’t help.

Another thing that bothers me about the Epson printers is the price of the ink. I can understand why HP cartridges cost $30 each. They have the print head built into them. Every time you change the cartridge, you change the print head. The Epson cartridges are just ink. The print head is built into the printer.

The printer is VERY LOUD. It often takes 2 minutes to charge the print heads when it is turned on. You can't print while this is happening and this process makes a lot of noise.

Finally, the print quality can be inconsistent. Sometimes the photos I print are amazing, other times, they can be blotchy.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 420
Operating System: Windows