Great side printer for home if you have a lazer printer at work
Written: Jun 11 '01
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Pros: Fast, good print quality, versatile, customizable driver, cheap inks
Cons: Eats up ink fast
The Bottom Line: I recomend this printer only if you already have one you can use heavily (such as a laser printer at work or school). Perfect for letters and occasional photos.
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| nad_masters's Full Review: Epson Stylus® Color 740 InkJet Printer |
If you have kids at home, or even do a little photo printing at home, but don't want to spend alot, this is the perfect printer for you!
Forget the specs you read on the box. This printer is still subjectively fast! Normal quality letters are done so quick, I'd barely have time to save and exit Word before the paper hits the output tray! Draft is way faster, and still well suited for letters.
Connectivity also grants well for this machine. It has a parallel port and USB connection, which makes it pretty universal.
Some may not know it, but if you try to print a blank page, the 740 will not budge. I guess the designer figured if you wanted a blank page, just get it out of the input bin.
As for the inks, they are pretty cheap when bought from eBay! They range around $12 for color or black. Unfortunatly for some who'd rather use genuine Epson ink, these are from 3rd party vendors.
It's a good thing you can find cheap ink, too, because this thing is thirsty. After 10 pages of printing from MapQuest (mix of text and small amount of graphics - the ad and the map), all of my inks are registering at half full.
This printer also have a "warm-up" time. If you leave it on when you aren't using it, it still won't help. it takes a while for the printer to do it's thing (cleaning?) before it grabs a blank sheet and prints.
The drivers have lots of settings to play with! It even does booklets and double-sided printing without use of an external program! One of my favorite feature is that the printer driver's own print preview can (if set) pop up everytime you print so you can see EXACTLY what is going to spit out of your printer. I'd trust the driver's prievew over Word's, IE's, or other apps' previews. Afterall, the driver is the one who is going to tell the printer exactly what to print. (a driver tells a device in it's own native language what to do and how to do it).
Print quality is actally on par with the Cannon 7000 series, which is saying alot! These printers are in the $300 range... not worth it for your average user. I just happen upon one for only $150 (returned item)... ink was definately expensive ($50 a pop for either cartridges!).
I would recomdend this printer for users who already have a printer they can use at work or school, and only require little printing at home. If you also do occasional photo prints, this would not dissapoint. However, just be warned: you will be needing alot of cartridges.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 150
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
nad_masters
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 in Computer Hardware |
 - Top 100 |
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Location: Chicago, IL, USA
Reviews written: 551
Trusted by: 114 members
About Me:
If you mind is in the gutter, where are your hands?
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