Re: [opensuse] Re: does it work? Epson WorkForce 600

Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Fred Miller [08-16-09 22:53]:

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Patrick Shanahan wrote:

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But the situation has resolved iself, printer is no longer being consider for purchase. Good.....think you'd regretted it.

I agree. It wasn't for me as I would not have considered it to start with. I like Epson printers and have had good luck with them. Still have a Stylus Photo 925 on my desktop, but will probably get HP the next time as I believe they are better supported, *now*.

Correct. I'll add some info. here that may be useful to some. First, there still, as a generality, are only 2 makers we can consider as Linux users. HP and Epson because of driver support, NOT that support is as good as it should be with either company because it's NO WHERE NEAR as good as it should be. I've yet to find out from any company an HONEST statement as to why this has continued to be a problem for Linux users. If the US Senate wants to pass a piece of mandating legislation that would do us more good than anything else, there should be law that MANDATES EQUAL drivers for Linux, Macs, and 'Bloze from ANY and ALL OEMS for ALL 'puter hardware.....PERIOD. Ok....now that I've got that off my chest, here's what I have discovered with my own printers and those of clients. First, the assumptions we apply to consumer market printers often don't apply to the professional photo or business market. There is a wider selection of makers available with heavy duty networked laser printers, for example. For plotters, there really isn't any choice but HP or Epson, and HP provides the most bang for the buck, especially if you refill the cartridges...see below. Now, the pro. photo market is different and interesting to me because I've had to have HIGH QUALITY results for sometime, and I have to have prints up through 13"x19". Anything larger, I send out. Until roughly 6 yrs. ago, all ink was dye based. Plotters, for example are still all dye based as far as I know, and all "consumer" printers are also dye based except for the new Kodak printer(s) (ESP3 All In One) advertised on TV. There are problems with that printer so it's not an option IMHO....no Linux driver for starters. There are 4 of these all in one printers and Kodak doesn't even list the resolutions they print at. :( I've looked at prints from them and although not bad, aren't "stunning" by any means. They also DON'T print well with any non-Kodak paper like Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl or Ilford Galerie Smooth High Gloss. The later is designed for pigment ink printers and is called a "media", not paper, as it's a plastic. 'VERY durable stuff...has a very white base, is very glossy, light weight, provides exceptionally sharp images (depending on your image), high color density and brightness. The down side is that it's very expensive. :( Epson was the first company, as far as I know, to use pigment ink...what they called "rare earth pigment". On acid free paper, archival ratings were 100 yr. or better. There was and still is, however, an expensive downside to the pigment inks. First, Epson wasn't able to duplicate the tonal gradation available with a pro. dye based printer, nor the wide variation of pastels, nor accurate flesh tones required for pro. work. The "expensive downside" was and STILL IS with Epson printers, head clogging....quickly and easily. You MUST frequently run a cleaning cycle to keep the nozzles unclogged. So, even though you had good archival qualities, the printer was expensive to maintain and image quality wasn't as good as a pro. dye based printer. Today is another story.....thankfully. ;) HP has 2 EXCELLENT mid-market printers that use their pigment inks with results that are FAR better than Epson's current printers. HP provides EQUALLY good tonality to high end dye based printers, with acid free paper archival to 200 yrs., as water proof an ink as I've ever seen, AND not expensive to maintain! The 2 models are: Photosmart Pro B8850 and the 9180. ONLY the B8850 is supported in the HP hplip driver. Both have 8 LARGE cartridges and use the same inks, etc. and both are mid-market printers. The B8850 weights around 50lbs. HP has firmware that checks ALL nozzles every 24 hours and if one is clogged, it cleans and clears it. Epson hasn't developed this tech. yet and should. When I had a mid-market Epson printer, I was able to slightly improve tonality and flesh tones by using ink from MIS....the ONLY US ink maker.....http://www.inksupply.com. You not only can save a LOT of money on any ink with them, but OFTEN their ink is superior to what you get from the printer maker. This is THE BEST ink maker there is, IMHO. They just released ink for the B8850 and 9180 using their own refillable cartridges. The HP universal driver, hplip, is still a work in progress and there should soon be better support for printers like the B8850, like 8"x10" which I presently have to manually configure. Almost all the HP consumer printers are well supported and are my first recommendation over all other makes. 'Hope all this helps. Fred -- Gun-toting Americans are clearly more self-sufficient than the sissy Europeans. This is great news for everyone except Barney Frank, who's always secretly wondered what it would be like to be taken by a Somali pirate. --Ann Coulter -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org