Epson 1280 - lessons learned

[winwintoo]

It's working again

My problems began last summer, but unfortunately, I was too ill at the time to be bothered trying to get it fixed. Happily, I have healed, but sadly the printer did not

I did some research and found that I was not the only one having problems. I came across a forum where some folks shared horror stories of endless grief and numerous replacement printers.

In the midst of all that angst, one lonely voice kept repeating that the humidity was affecting the paper and therefore the print quality. As it happens, last summer was one of the hottest and most humid in our history - this makes sense.

When a started having problems, I pushed the printer in the corner and didn't try to use it - over time, the print heads must have dried out and I had to clean it several times.

Then it ran out of ink

Since I've now switched to OS X, I had to hunt up new drivers. Epson in their wisdom (not) changed how drivers are installed on the Mac. Used to be, you clicked the installer and it all happened while you went for coffee. Now, you have to manually install the driver for each type of paper - IMHO that's a return to the dark ages.

Anyway it's working now, paper feeds, pictures look pretty good etc.

Thanks
Margaret

[KevinBE]

Wow! I'm happy to say that I haven't had problems that resemble those you have gone through. I have to stick up for Epson on one point. Apple is the culprit for the change in the driver situation. They have made it hard on a lot of 3rd party vendors to get drivers working. I guess Apply is afraid that someone will steal their secrets? Apple has gone to great lengths to hide the fact that OS X is really Unix. The shell they wrote to run on top of their Unix core, called OS X, doesn't have to be as hard to deal with as they have made it. I think Steve Jobs has made a mistake by keeping the Apple systems closed. He would be probably be almost as rich as Bill Gates if he had just opened the architecture to developers. He still has one more chance to make it happen but the door is closing fast.

Anyway enough of my ranting. I still have my Epson 870, and it will act up if I don't use it for a couple of months. But, I keep it busy because I don't print text or other documents to my 2200, just pictures.

I hope you have had all the trouble for now and that you are able to enjoy the technology instead of being at odds with it.

[winwintoo]

I'm glad I got it working too. I was contemplating just ditching it since I wouldn't want to sell a lemon to someone else.

I agree with you about OS X. My next computer will be Windows. I used Macs and liked them because you didn't need to know what was going on behind the scenes, you could concentrate on doing your job. Since I started using OS X, I've had nothing but grief with it.

Prior to OS X, I would always recommend a Mac to a new computer user, but not any more.

Take care, Margaret