I loved my first Epson printer which was a Stylus Color 740. I used it daily for an incredible EIGHT YEARS and it was a war horse. I could feed anything and it would print -- labels, recycled paper, index cards, double fold party invitations -- ANYTHING! By the time it died after 8 years of service I was a loyal Epson fan.
I picked out the C88+ because it was extremely inexpensive (I think about $59 before cables and cartridges) and because I really just need another war horse -- nothing too fancy, no need for lots of bells and whistles.
The good news: the print quality is really great for my purposes (lots of correspondence, flyers, check printing, etc). I do not use it for photographs so I can't say whether it is a good photo quality printer or not. The bad news: the paper feed is just terrible. It cannot handle the Quicken voucher checks I've used since 1991 (they frequently come out cockeyed), envelopes are iffy, and recycled paper is absolutely out of the question (that is, paper that's been printed on one side previously).
I think the machine is noisy -- I'm not bothered by that but some might be. It seems like the print cartridges don't last very long but that might be a function of their cost, meaning that the more you pay for a cartridge, the longer you hope it will last.
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