Ever since the late 1980's when I got my first computer (a cousin's cast off Sinclair ZX Spectrum after he switched to AMIGA instead), I always wanted a printer when looking at the accessories advertised in the back of "Your Sinclair" magazine. I finally got one around September / October / November 2000, a year after I bought my first ever PC & Monitor. It was a Xerox Docuprint C8, I think an end of line product CURRYS in Scarborough were flogging off for £50. This printer lasted me right through until Friday 16th February 2007, when I was about to print off a letter to my Prison Penpal in California before lunch. I hit the print button in MS WordPad, and sweet-F/A happened. The low ink warning light had quit flashing, and the printer didn't try to "prime the printhead" as I believe the manufacturer's instruction refer to it when the printer set off at random making noises (and making me nearly jump out of my skin half the time). So, a new printer was required........ a search round town found not a single shop that occasionally has them in selling any budget ones, or any expensive ones either for that matter (it had to be a budget one, since at the time I was about £370 into my overdraft limit).......... so a visit to Amazon.co.uk was required. The
first one they had in the search results was for this EPSON STYLUS DX4000Multi-Function jobbie for £49.94 - It cost a few pence less than my old Xerox, yet as well as a printer had a built-in scanner + photocopying facility. Come Sunday night, I decided, ah what the hell, I'll buy it........ and thus my bank account was relieved of £58.63 (Cost of the printer + express delivery to get it by Tuesday). Well, Tuesday arrived, and 11:30am it was here......... getting it out of the box was the usual affair of pulling it out via the protective polystyrene blocks on each side, while holding onto the box with my feet, then swinging the printer over onto the diningtable in the livingroom before it fell out of the polystyrene blocks (and believe me, it felt like it could happen any second).
Once you've got it out of the polystyrene blocks, all that is left to do is peel off the protective plastic from various places, and remove the blue sticky-tape holding it's flaps in place (oo-er!).
Once my old printer was unhooked. and the new printer being reviewed here plonked in it's place......... BOLLOCKS! No printer cable. As I had to go to town that day anyway (signing at the job centre day), I guess it wasn't too big a problem (except finding a shop selling it)........... I eventually one, a "USB Type A to USB Type B" which cost me about £5
The build quality is reasonably good......... the main body is kinda made of cheap(ish) but tough plastic.... similar to them CURVER plastic tool boxes.......... while the top for the scanner / photocopier is smooth "Darth Vader black", with a silver plastic lip to lift it up by to try give it some style. The buttons are also silver plastic.
From top down, the buttons are: - On / Off button
- Unsure, but I think it has something to do with telling the printer to bloody get on with it again after an out of paper / out of ink / paper jam warning.
- Unsure, but looks like something to do with selecting paper size (When photocopying, perhaps?)
- Photocopy in Black & White
- Photocopy in Colour
- STOP
And now for how the thing performs...............
PRINTING (Text) Fast, with crisp & clear letters Possibly the first Inkjet printer I've ever used that doesn't rock the desk / table about as though there's a wild sex scene from a porno movie being filmed on the table (not that I watch that kind of thing, you understand)
PRINTING (images) Again pretty fast, and quality is pretty much photo perfect (best I've used in fact..... perhaps even as good as the HP Photosmart1000 I used to use on a NEW DEAL Workplacement a couple of years ago). Though so far I've only ever tested it on bog standard WOOLWORTHS brand A4 printer paper.
SCANNING (images) Fastest I've ever used....... I've roughly timed it scanning a regular sized print @ 600dpi in 1minute flat in FULL AUTO mode. Auto mode makes things far simpler (instead of previewing, selecting the area where the photo is, then scanning).......... this does all the work for you, so if you're a cackhanded sod at scanning pictures (though I'm virtually a master at it), and usually end up scanning the picture + have a massive great white expanse surrounding it too (I've had many online friends like that in the past).. that'll become a thing of the past. However, darker images will confuzzle this mode into thinking it's a black&white image, so when this happens you've got to do it again manually. Otherwise it's pretty damn good at scanning......... virtually cleared a backlog of pictures I've been wanting to scan for years, but not had chance to do them over at my Grandma's.
PHOTOCOPYING Again, pretty fast & really good quality. In the past I've not been a big fan of photocopying via PC / Printer / Scanner, as all the ones I've used in the past have done it via software....... and using it usually resulted in the PC grinding to a halt, and having to try again on a fresh boot-up. This does it via buttons on the machine, like a PROPER photocopier, and is almost as fast........ no options for shrinking or enlarging, though. Reproduction quality is excellent, copying a couple of letters my Dad wanted copying to accompany some complaint letters perfectly (which other means of photocopying them wouldn't even touch........... like it's photocopying, but come out so faint you couldn't damn well read it....... this copied it perfectly).
INK Not owned it long enough yet to find out more about this, but it's one of those printers that uses 4 different ink tanks (cartridges) - BLACK / YELLOW / CYAN (blue) + MAGENTA (red), instead of one black ink cartridge + one colour ink cartridge....... so if one colour runs out, but all the others are fine you only have to replace the one cartridge without wasting the rest. Individual cartridges I've seen available on AMAZON UK for between £5 - £7, while you can also buy a pack of 4 catridges for a few pence over £20
Overall, this is a bloody brilliant budget printer capable of beating the cr*p out of more expensive ones.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Advantages: Outstanding picture quality, good software and a scanner. Disadvantages: Start up head cleaning cycle uses a lot of ink. Tied to using Epson cartridges
Mar 16th, 2007
very helpful by (100%):
