I have used several different types of printer in my time, my first being an Epson and my last being an Epson. I had something else in the middle but got another Epson pretty quickly. I use something different at work sometimes but really like Epson printers best.
When we first bought our computer I wanted one with a good printer and digital camera so that I could print my own photos, several hundred pounds and mistakes later I am doing rather a lot of that. Some of my first prints were stunning and some of them were too small to see or too big to fit on A4 paper, never did work out why but that doesn’t happen so often nowadays. (Joke, I know it is all in the settings)
Nowadays the computer tower sits on the top of the desk instead of on the floor, this came about once the grandchildren learnt how to move around because as soon as they did they found they got shrieked at and moved if they pressed the button
and everything went quiet, also of course all the different leads were a terrible temptation to exploring little fingers.
So of course my desk was somewhat crowded with a tower, keyboard, monitor, printer, scanner and of course a digital camera and digital camcorder. I thought long and hard about what we could do, I suggested shelves above the monitor but that was a non starter because it takes a long time to get anything done round here.
The next best thing seemed to me to be an all in one printerscanner. I spent quite a long time looking them up on the Internet, reading reviews and working out which would be best value for money, also which would print best for the money I had to spend. This was unusual for me because I am an impulse buyer usually.
In the end I took myself and grandson to Curry’s to see what they had in the shop, (if I find a category for shopping with toddlers then I will write reams and reams) they had loads on the website but I am always in such a hurry I couldn’t wait for them to deliver it.
It claims to feature Epson’s latest printing and scanning technologies, to be quick and easy for printing and copying. To be user friendly and high performance. The best dpi for printing is 5760, which is much higher than my last printer, which was a photo printer. The results are professional looking photos, with edge-to-edge printing up to A4, which makes for even bigger photos. This is a great feature if you like printing and framing the best of the prints. It means no white edge to cut off and being able to use larger frames. The only word of warning here is that if the photo is old or not so good quality in the first place then it can appear a bit fuzzy or pixelated at the edges.
In the pastI have I have had problems with scanners, I don’t know why but the results have often been dark or fuzzy, I spent a load of time trying to scan in and print out old photos and the results left a lot to be desired.
Those problems seem to be over. This machine has a standalone copy function. What a great idea, just scan it in and print it out in one press of the button. But don’t rush it like me. For some reason I thought if I scanned in a little old photo I would print out a perfect A4 print. Ha Ha, this can be done, but needs setting up first otherwise all you get is a little old photo on an A4 piece of paper, which of course is a bit of a waste of paper when you use the expensive photo stuff.
The software includes loads of fun templates and suchlike, which I haven’t used, but probably would be good for someone experimenting.
The in store price was £99.95 which seemed good value to me. It can be bought for less on the website but I wanted it there and then. Also there was a delivery charge, which closed the gap somewhat. Therefore I decided to give it a go. After queuing for ages balancing the large box on the back of the pushchair I handed over my little bit of plastic and the box belonged to me.
Unpacking and installation was quickly and easily achieved. I had a bit of fun playing with the various features, made a few silly mistakes and printed some lovely photos. I must say that is easily achieved if you have a toddling grandchild with you, they are so good at posing.
There seemed to be loads more room on the computer desk, although the family would say that I have filled it up with other things, like a paper cutter and a laminator.
I do quite a lot of printing and ink cartridges are quite expensive but lately I have used some very good compatible ones, with good results, costing £9.99 each for colour and the same for black, saving me loads of money for the next must have gadget.
It does 14ppm high speed printing. Obviously much slower for high quality photos and prints. The scanner is high-quality 600dpi, with 48bit scanning, I am not sure exactly what this means except that if I set it on the absolute best settings I get a huge file to work with and if I do too many like this it slows the computer down a bit. It can also be used without a P.C. as a copier/ printer although I am not sure anyone would buy this one just to scan and copy. Another good thing with Epson is it has a USB connection so can be easily attatched to a different computer. The photo enhance software is useful for printing different focuses or colours and the print image matching compatibility is great with my digital camera. This means what I take is what I get printed with exact colour matches. This is something I use a lot because there is not a lot of things more annoying than printing a lovely photo only to find that when it comes out of the printer the colours are off slightly. This is something I have moaned about at great length in the past.
I really can recommend this all in one machine. I use it almost daily and print photos, copy timesheets etc. You can copy to file, to a programme, to web and to fax. And scan documents as editable text. I didn't know that was what OCR meant, you've no idea how much trouble I used to have trying to copy forms and then not being able to type on them. That was in the days before I found out how to draw forms in Word. You can also scan to email and photo print so there are loads of options to play with. Loads of templates to jazz up your photos or presentations. It comes with photoquicker 3.2 which I have never used so can’t comment on but have heard of and am sure is a good enough programme depending what you want out of it.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Tres thourouG review !!! It sounds really quite gooD ... I'm hoping to Buy a hp priNter thouGH ! ~ philippA X. ~
yamcam 27.08.2004 16:04
I have this 1 as well & have had no problems with it at all & it only cost us £70 brandnew.....we can get the inks for £3.99 from the computer fair.....Brilliant machine. Angie x
Jul 10th, 2004
exceptional by (4%):
very helpful by (96%):
