Recently our Hewlett Packard printer had used about 8 of it's 9 lives. After putting it off for about a year, my husband and I decided it was time to break down and buy a new printer.

My husband did some research and comparisons at Best Buy and decided on a Lexmark printer. "Check to make sure it doesn't take expensive ink cartridges", I told him as he headed out the door to buy our new printer. He laughed.

Once he arrived at Best Buy and talked to the salesman he was talked into an entirely different printer. One that was a better quality, according to the salesman. My husband came home with an Epson Stylus C60 printer.

Features
The Epson Stylus C60 is comparable to most other printers in it's price range, except the HP which had far less features and poor resolution. Some of those features are:

•Top Loading
•2880X720 dpi resolution
•Prints 11ppm (page per minute) black and white, 8 ppm color
•USB and parallel cable interface
•100 page paper input capacity, 30 page paper output capacity
•Prints the following media types: Letter, legal, A4, B5, statement, executive, user definable, plain, bond; Epson Premium glossy photo paper, matte heavyweight paper, photo-quality film/paper, transparencies, self-adhesive sheets, ink jet cards, banner paper, envelopes, iron-on transfers
•Prints the following media sizes: Letter, legal, executive, postcard, index cards, multiple envelopes
•Uses 1 black and 1 color ink cartridge
•Prints Photo Quality when using photo quality paper
•128KB memory
•Quick drying

How Does It Look?
I really like the looks of this printer. It is a grayish/off white color with a charcoal gray plastic cover where the ink is. I think this printer has a very sleek look.

I like that the paper feeder is top loading. This keeps the paper out of reach of my budding artists who are also little paper swipers. The only difficult part about this is that I have short arms and it is hard for me to reach the paper tray with out actually getting off my buns, or moving the printer. Yep, you guessed it, I usually choose the latter.

I like that the paper output area can be folded up into the printer. This is nice, it looks much nicer when it is folded up. It also takes up a little less space this way.

How Does It Work
The Epson Stylus C60 works great! The resolution is good and it prints quickly. I think our previous printer took twice as long to print. This one prints faster and looks better.

There are no funny lines through the paper, the letters are all clear and crisp, no waving, smudging or anything like that.

It claims to be quick drying, and this is true. Just last night I was printing cards out from my card program. The cards had a great deal of color on them and I was printing a batch of 15. There were no color smudges and no color bleeding. The quality of the cards was great!

The printer makes a soft humming when it is on but not printing. It's that annoying white noise that is somewhat bothersome, but easy to correct, if your not using the printer, turn it off :) The nosiest part of the printing is when the paper loads into the printer. It makes quite a bit of clicking as the paper loads. Once printing it is fairly quiet.

I have not used the photo printing feature as I don't usually print out photos and I was not buying it for that feature.

Why I Recommend This Printer
I recommend the Epson Stylus C60 because I think it is a good competitor in this price range. It certainly has the HP beat. The printer has a nice look to it as well.

But the main reason I recommend this printer is the simple fact that it does what it says. The pages come out nicely, it prints in 5 different resolutions (120 x 120 dpi, 1440 x 720 dpi, 360 x 360 dpi, 180 x 180 dpi, 2880 x 720 dpi) so that you don't have to waste ink, the ink dries quickly so no smudges (a definite problem with our previous printer).

I also like that this printer has a feature on it that tells me what my ink status is. When printing a graphic pops up on my screen to tell me how low my ink is, this is quite handy. With our previous printer you didn't know until the pictures started coming out funky.

This printer is easy to install, or so my husband says. It took him about 30 minutes from start to finish with 2 children talking his ear off. It comes with a large, easy to read instruction sheet.

One thing I don't like about this printer is that it cannot be used in conjunction with a power switch. We have our computer hooked up to a power switch so that everything can be turned off/on in one location. It clearly states in the directions that this printer cannot be used with a power strip, it must be turned on by the printers power button. It is not really a big deal, it wouldn't stop me from recommending this printer.

Adding paper and ink to this printer is a snap. Changing the configurations and properties of the printer is also a snap. It is very easy to use.

The owners manual is easy to read and follow and contains a trouble shooting section should you run into any problems. You can also go to www.epson.com and get help online.

What's The Damage?
I was actually surprised that my husband could find a printer for under $100, I thought they were much higher than that. We paid $99.00 for this printer and there is a $20 mail in rebate which I will be sending in.

You do have to buy 2 different ink cartridges (which are easy to replace) for this printer. They are about $30 each at Best Buy. The Lexmark that we were looking at required printer cartridges that were about $10 more than this printer.

I highly recommend the Epson Stylus C60. For less than $100 you will get a quality printer.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 99.00
Operating System: Windows