Two days after my scanner gave up the ghost the print heads on my printer decided to become irretrievably blocked. I therefore decided that it was just about time to replace them, so I had a hunt around on the internet for replacements and as luck would have it (or not) all-in-one printers had just started to rear their ugly heads. At the time there were two choices of manufacturer, Lexmark and Epson, and although the Lexmark was considerably cheaper, I'd learnt my lesson as regards the price of replacement ink cartridges. So I went for the Epson CX3200, and have now had it in my possession for nearly two years and feel able to tell you all about it.

This printer is, in a word, huge. Remember that it includes an A4 scanner, and is actually even larger than that. In fact, it was a very tight squeeze getting it onto the shelf on my computer desk. Colour-wise it's a bog standard beige colour, which actually seems to get grubby very quickly. This is not a printer that is designed to look attractive or stylish, but is purely practical.

Due to the fact that this is both a printer and scanner, installation takes quite a long time. There are several sets of drivers to install, along with a status monitor and control panel. It's very important not to actually switch the printer on until the installation program tells you to, but you can still connect it up via the USB connection.

---Scanning---

In case you're interested the maximum resolution of the scanner is 600 x 1200 dpi, and this is the setting I generally use for photographs. By using the Windows XP scanner wizard, I can adjust resolution, colour settings and scan size easily so I am able to get almost perfect results.

Before we even get to print, we have to manage to put some paper into the printer, and this is a job and a half in itself. I find it very difficult to correctly place the paper in the guides, and even when I think I've got it right, I sometimes find that the paper manages to make it's way through the printer at an angle, which isn't too much of a bother if it's just an ordinary sheet with a letter on, but can work out expensive when it's a sheet of glossy photo paper with an A4 photo. Even when I manage to position the paper so that it's straight, the printer seems to have the odd quirk of feeding several sheets through at once. With normal printing this isn't a big problem, but if I'm trying to create double-sided numbered prints (for an essay for example), it does mean that there are occasional runs where page numbering becomes very messed up.

As well as being able to work with a computer, this printer can be used as a standalone photocopier. Simply put the page you want to copy (face-down) on the scanner, and choose whether you want a colour or black and white copy. This works very well, albeit a bit slower than I originally expected and is invaluable for those times when you need to make a quick copy of a letter and can't be bother to turn the computer on.

There is an LCD display on top of the printer, which provides such information as whether the paper is jammed or the ink is running low. This display is reasonably clear, if a little dim, and gives a good indication of the printer's status when it's not connected to a powered-up computer.

This printer takes two ink cartridges, one black and the other tri-colour, both of which have chips which make refilling slightly awkward. The official Epson cartridges (TO40/41) are fairly expensive, but I've found that I get just as good results by using compatibles. The one thing that didn't work out so well is re-filling cartridges, I found this cause the printer heads to get blocked very quickly.