epson cx3600 > Reviews > You can never have too much polystyrene.

Author's product rating:   

Picture quality	Good
Printing speed	Fast
Colour sensitivity	Good
Reliability	Good
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	Stand alone copying feature
Disadvantages:	It got updated very quickly .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Firstly let me refer to the title. Anybody who buys a lot of electricals will know that if you for instance buy a portable cd player you will get a box the size of Shropshire and enough packaging to make a 1:1 scale replica of Stonehenge (twice) and the Epson doesn't disappoint on that score.

Once unboxed, the first thing you notice is the size. 17.5 inches length, 19 inches width (When paper is in, and tray is extended) and 8 inches tall (these measurements are approx). It is quite a beast. But you do get a lot for your space. It's a printer, scanner and photocopier all-in-one system.

The Epson plugs into your computer via a USB cable and so long as the software disk is present in your cd drive then installation is quite simple. The printer comes with a barrage of epson software to make using your printer a more joyable experience:
Epson Photoquicker 3.5 - This is used to make slight adjustments to photographs such as red eye reduction and brightness (these are the more simpler options, there is a lot more depth to what you can do) to print out a better photo.
Epson Photostarter 3.1 - this is a facilty which helps you download your photo's from a memory card to your PC quicker. This is a very handy tool......... if the printer came with a port for memory cards, which it doesn't. In other words it's totally irrelevant to the product.
Epson Scan - This is used for your scanning purposes and allows you to save to your computer or print, whichever takes your fancy.
Epson Web-To-Page - This is used if you want to print off a web page and is very easy to use as the toolbar for it comes up whenever you are on the internet. So you just press print when you see something you like.
Epson Smart Panel - This is the general overview software as it integrates all of the software of the printer so you don't have to look for it on your desktop.

My one disappointment is that it got updated very quickly, but not to worry, this printer has excellent features, is now very good value for money. I have seen them on Comet's website for £59 (sept 05). I bought mine for £110 from littlewoods home shopping as I had some commission to put towards it which at the time which cheap in comparison to other products.

The stand-alone copy feature is great, you don't need your computer turned on. Just press copy on the keypad until the desired number needed is displayed on the LED display, select if you want to fit to the page, press either Start B&W or Start Color, and it will quite happily chug out your copies.

The technical bit.
Print up to 15 pages per minute on economy settings in both black and colour text.
Photocopy up to 12 pages per minute in black and colour text.
4 colour cartridges, Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. I usually buy the cartridges directly from Epson directly. Black is £13.68 and the others are £10.32. There are compatibles on the market but are not recommended by Epson as they won't make as much money....I mean they reduce print quality and printer life expectancy. But seriously, using compatible cartridges can invalidate your warranty.
The printer prints at up to 5760 dpi.
The scanner has an optical resolution of 600x1200 dpi.
The paper carraige on the back of the machine can hold approximately 100 sheets of A4 plain paper and 20 sheets of photo paper. The printer supports different paper sizes. A4, B5, A5, Letter, Executive 7, A6 index card, 5x8" and 8x10" along with various envelope sizes. C6 (162x114mm), No. 10 (241.3x104.8mm), DL (220x110mm), and 220x132mm.
The printer operates at 45 db, so isn't too noisy.
The printer comes with the drivers for computers that go back as far as Windows 98. These are the minimum specifications required:
Windows 98/ME: Pentium 233MHz; 64MB RAM; 40MB HDD Space
Windows 2000: Pentium 233MHz; 64MB RAM; 70MB HDD Space
Windows XP: Pentium 233MHz; 256MB RAM; 70MB HDD Space
Macintosh OS 9.1: PowerPC G3; 64MB RAM; 60MB HDD Space
Macintosh OS X 10.2 or later: PowerPC G3; 128MB RAM; 60MB HDD Space

And these are the recommended:
Windows 98/ME: Pentium 300MHz; 64MB RAM; 800MB HDD Space
Windows 2000: Pentium 300MHz; 64MB RAM; 800MB HDD Space
Windows XP: Pentium 300MHz; 256MB RAM; 850MB HDD Space
Macintosh OS 9.1: PowerPC G4; 256MB RAM; 1.3GB HDD Space
Macintosh OS X 10.2 or later: PowerPC G4; 256MB RAM; 2.8GB HDD Space.

The emphasis of this package is ease of use, and so far I haven't had any problems with it. But I do recommend that you don't put on the top shelf of a computer workstation like what I did. When you print anything, because of the ferocity with which the cartridge carousel moves, will make your workstation wobble to the point where you think it will fall over.

This is a good printer and I wished I had waited so that i could have utilised Comet's offer on them.

Thanks for reading
Graham