Date other printers; marry an Epson
Written: Jul 19 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Outstanding customer service
Cons: Envelope problems, thirsty for ink
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| cwainwright's Full Review: Epson Stylus® Color 740 InkJet Printer |
Inkjets aren’t sexy. Buying one is about as personally fulfilling as paying the monthly gas, water & electric bills. Worse, the price has dropped so low on these puppies that they’re in danger of being viewed as commodity items like soap or detergent or floor cleaner, to be purchased according to price when necessity warrants with no regard to brand name.
Big mistake.
I know because when I bought my Epson Stylus Color 740 inkjet printer over one year ago, I chose it with all the care I might put into buying, say, a 12-pack of toilet paper. I needed a cheap, color inkjet to hook up to my lumbering PowerMac clone and I needed it fast. So I scuttled over to Office Depot, found the one non-Mac (read: cheap) machine that would hook up to my old Mac, hooked her up and thought that was the end of it.
It would have been the end of it, had my Epson continued to chug along unremarkably, but about six months ago, it began making hideous, internal grinding noises—the kind that send you rushing to a mechanic, face drained of color, when you hear them under the hood of your car. The manual was no help (when are manuals any help?), the online help was no help and I just didn’t have the gumption to call Epson (I think I was dealing with Pacific Bell a lot around that time—‘nuff said.)
Still, the Epson only seemed to shudder with pain when I printed from Quark Xpress, so I typed up a new resume in Word and made like an ostrich. Finally, a big graphics job forced me off my keister and onto the phone with tech, where a nice lady somewhere in Orange County, CA walked me through resetting the printer. This helped for about a month, when the problem returned with a vengeance—now the printer wouldn’t print. At all. Resetting didn’t help. Reinstalling the software didn’t help.
I dug out my receipt from Office Depot, steeled myself for the worst and called Epson customer service again. The nice man somewhere in Orange County, CA ran down his tech list, but we quickly reached an impasse.
“Okay,” he said, “I’m going to send you a new one.”
What?
“I’ll send you a new one via UPS. You pack yours up in that same box, call UPS and they’ll pick it up from you.”
What’s next—a white rabbit with a pocket watch and a stout, red-faced queen yelling “Off with her head!”?!?
Nope. True to his word, two days later, Mr. Epson sent an emissary from UPS with a brand-new printer. I hooked up theirs, sent back mine (and took my sweet time with it) and for the past two months anyway, I’ve lived happily ever after.
I was so inspired by my experience, I even dug out the sample pack of papers included with the original unit and printed out some photo-quality resolutions and iron-on transfers. For the record, the Epson does a dandy job of printing both of these. The colors are true, and it does a remarkable job with high-resolution printing for a non-PostScript printer.
Moreover, the software is easy to install and I’ve had no compatibility problems with any programs I print on—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator. I printed a batch of mailing labels with no problem. Ink is outrageously expensive and the Epson sucks it up like Ray Milland hitting the bottle in The Lost Weekend, but this seems to be a common problem with inkjets. I have the Epson 740 hooked up to my Mac via a SCSI connection, but it’s also PC-compatible. It’s got a fairly small “footprint,” and is the usual, unobtrusive shade of PVC-gray computers & such favor.
The one difficulty I’ve had is in printing envelopes. Some of it is typical operator error—no matter how many times I print from a program, I still forget which way to feed those consarned special papers. But even with a correct feed, there’s often smearing. You can burn through a lot of envelopes if, like me, you don’t print envelopes often.
But for regular printing, the Epson 740 is just fine. More importantly, if it’s ever less than fine, Epson customer service takes care of the problem.
And that makes Epson my peripheral partner for life.
Although I think I’ll keep my own name.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
cwainwright
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Member: Colleen Wainwright
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Reviews written: 27
Trusted by: 29 members
About Me:
Call me 'the communicatrix.'
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