Epson Stylus Color R200/R300
My Epson Stylus Color C84 is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm running 9.2 Pro and am looking for a printer YaST supports right out of the box. Both the R200 and the R300 are listed; anyone have any good or bad experiences with these printers? I'm a little nervous because these printers seem to be USB printers, and heretofore I've always used either network or parallel printers. I use USB on this box for UPS management and syncing with my Palm. The UPS works flawlessly, the Palm seems to utilize a random number generator when it comes to selecting which USB ports it will use, hence, my nervousness. Thanks, Mark P.S. Alternate printer suggestions are welcomed. I don't need super high-speed printing, but I do print enough client presentations and the like that I tend to wear out these printers every year or so. I need crystal-clear 720-dpi printing and reasonably good printing of screen shots on high-quality inkjet paper. I don't need to print real photos, scan docs, or anything else. Just a good basic color inkjet printer that's reasonably fast. -- _________________________________________________________ A Message From... L. Mark Stone Reliable Networks of Maine, LLC "We manage your network so you can manage your business." 477 Congress Street Portland, ME 04101 Tel: (207) 772-5678 Web: http://www.rnome.com
My Epson Stylus Color C84 is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm running 9.2 Pro and am looking for a printer YaST supports right out of the box. Both the R200 and the R300 are listed; anyone have any good or bad experiences with these printers? I'm running 9.3 Pro, but I upgraded from 9.1/9.2 . I have an Epson Stylus Color 880 that has been absolutely wonderful. I've had some problems printing from some programs, like Acrobat reader, but mostly I think those were cockpit errors. Some programs use different printing apps, but the printer works fine. I normally
On Mon July 18 2005 1:10 pm, L. Mark Stone wrote: print from CUPS, without a problem. -- Paul Cartwright Registered Linux user # 367800 X-Request-PGP: http://home.comcast.net/~p.cartwright/wsb/key.asc
On Monday, July 18, 2005 01:21 pm, Paul Cartwright wrote:
On Mon July 18 2005 1:10 pm, L. Mark Stone wrote:
My Epson Stylus Color C84 is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm running 9.2 Pro and am looking for a printer YaST supports right out of the box. Both the R200 and the R300 are listed; anyone have any good or bad experiences with these printers?
I'm running 9.3 Pro, but I upgraded from 9.1/9.2 . I have an Epson Stylus Color 880 that has been absolutely wonderful. I've had some problems printing from some programs, like Acrobat reader, but mostly I think those were cockpit errors. Some programs use different printing apps, but the printer works fine. I normally print from CUPS, without a problem.
Thanks Paul for your fast reply, I should have said I am a big Epson fan. I've happily burned through a number of their printers over the years, so I don't need to be sold on Epsons in principle! I'm really looking to see if anyone using 9.2 Pro is successfully using either the R200 or the R300 at the same time as other USB devices. Best regards, Mark -- _________________________________________________________ A Message From... L. Mark Stone Reliable Networks of Maine, LLC "We manage your network so you can manage your business." 477 Congress Street Portland, ME 04101 Tel: (207) 772-5678 Web: http://www.rnome.com
L. Mark Stone wrote:
I'm really looking to see if anyone using 9.2 Pro is successfully using either the R200 or the R300 at the same time as other USB devices.
I've been using an R300 with my Fuji camera on 9.2. In both cases it was plug and play on the USB. Not had any issues yet except that the driver seems to be about 1mm off left to right in its registration and I haven't found how to fix it yet! -- Tim Nicholson http://www.bbc.co.uk/ This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated. If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system. Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately. Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received. Further communication will signify your consent to this.
On Monday 18 July 2005 10:10 am, L. Mark Stone wrote:
My Epson Stylus Color C84 is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm running 9.2 Pro and am looking for a printer YaST supports right out of the box. Both the R200 and the R300 are listed; anyone have any good or bad experiences with these printers?
<snip> Not exactly. But I do have RX600, which I think is a later version with scanner. Impressions: print is great, both B/W and color. Paper handling leaves a lot to be desired: only holds about 100 sheets, runs multiple sheets if you try to add more while printing, ie, must remove all sheets, add as a unit. Also easily runs multiple sheets thru unless you very carefully stack the paper. Locks up and will not print anything, even B/W text, unless ALL color cartridges have ink. Stopped printing for me recently because the "light cyan" was empty, even though was set for B/W text, no color. Cartidges are pretty spendy. OTOH, setup was easy, just worked with YAST and I have had no problems using it and USB has been pretty solid. Occassionally have to start print from Konq:localhost 631, etc, but otherwise pretty reliable. Summary: I would look back at HP again due to paper handling issues. Richard
On Mon, 18 Jul 2005, L. Mark Stone wrote:
My Epson Stylus Color C84 is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm running 9.2 Pro and am looking for a printer YaST supports right out of the box. Both the R200 and the R300 are listed; anyone have any good or bad experiences with these printers?
I'm a little nervous because these printers seem to be USB printers, and heretofore I've always used either network or parallel printers.
I use USB on this box for UPS management and syncing with my Palm. The UPS works flawlessly, the Palm seems to utilize a random number generator when it comes to selecting which USB ports it will use, hence, my nervousness.
Thanks, Mark
P.S. Alternate printer suggestions are welcomed. I don't need super high-speed printing, but I do print enough client presentations and the like that I tend to wear out these printers every year or so. I need crystal-clear 720-dpi printing and reasonably good printing of screen shots on high-quality inkjet paper. I don't need to print real photos, scan docs, or anything else. Just a good basic color inkjet printer that's reasonably fast.
Given those requirements, I'd buy an HP. I have an Epson R300 and, although I'm very happy with it's output (esp. photos on photo paper which are stunning), I really hate printing with USB, although it generally works. When it decides to go weird, however, that's different. Also, I've had difficulty printing photo-quality from Linux. THe last thing is the driver makes a huge difference. I have an HP laserjet (an old one) and print speeds will vary by more than a factor of 10 based purely on the driver (ppd) I choose in the cups config. Only one of the three available for the Epson seemed to work at all, for me. I got garbage output with 2 of the 3, but so long as it works I guess I don't care much. Lastly, ink will KILL you, unless you buy el-cheepo ink for example from E-Bay. For basic stuff I'd honestly consider a lower end color laser, especially if you are going through these things once a year - a low end laser should last YEARS and YEARS, and be vastly less expensive to run based on consumables alone. -- Carpe diem - Seize the day. Carp in denim - There's a fish in my pants! Jon Nelson <jnelson-suse@jamponi.net>
On Mon, 2005-07-18 at 13:10 -0400, L. Mark Stone wrote:
My Epson Stylus Color C84 is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm running 9.2 Pro and am looking for a printer YaST supports right out of the box. Both the R200 and the R300 are listed; anyone have any good or bad experiences with these printers?
I'm a little nervous because these printers seem to be USB printers, and heretofore I've always used either network or parallel printers.
I use USB on this box for UPS management and syncing with my Palm. The UPS works flawlessly, the Palm seems to utilize a random number generator when it comes to selecting which USB ports it will use, hence, my nervousness.
Thanks, Mark
P.S. Alternate printer suggestions are welcomed. I don't need super high-speed printing, but I do print enough client presentations and the like that I tend to wear out these printers every year or so. I need crystal-clear 720-dpi printing and reasonably good printing of screen shots on high-quality inkjet paper. I don't need to print real photos, scan docs, or anything else. Just a good basic color inkjet printer that's reasonably fast.
Have you considered using color laser printers? If you check the cost of the consumables you may find it cheaper in the long run and may last a lot longer as well. They have come down in price lately. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -Ernst Jan Plugge
On Monday, July 18, 2005 02:39 pm, Ken Schneider wrote:
Have you considered using color laser printers? If you check the cost of the consumables you may find it cheaper in the long run and may last a lot longer as well. They have come down in price lately.
Thanks Ken for the suggestion. I did indeed take a look at color lasers, and you are right that they have come down in price lately. Their consumables do cost less, but they use a lot more electricity and we are short on spare amps in this particular office. My printing volumes are not high enough for this lower consumables cost to be that significant. A few of our clients have hp color lasers; they have had paper handling issues after about a year or so, requiring a visit and a cleaning from the reseller. That service call essentially wiped out the savings from the lower cost of consumables. So, I have found it cheaper to simply replace an inkjet printer every year. Besides, for what one pays for an inkjet printer these days you are almost getting the whole printer for free if you consider the price as full retail for the included set of ink cartridges! Perhaps next year color lasers will down in price far enough to compete... Best regards, Mark -- _________________________________________________________ A Message From... L. Mark Stone Reliable Networks of Maine, LLC "We manage your network so you can manage your business." 477 Congress Street Portland, ME 04101 Tel: (207) 772-5678 Web: http://www.rnome.com
On Monday 18 July 2005 12:10 pm, L. Mark Stone wrote:
My Epson Stylus Color C84 is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm running 9.2 Pro and am looking for a printer YaST supports right out of the box. Both the R200 and the R300 are listed; anyone have any good or bad experiences with these printers?
I'm a little nervous because these printers seem to be USB printers, and heretofore I've always used either network or parallel printers.
I use USB on this box for UPS management and syncing with my Palm. The UPS works flawlessly, the Palm seems to utilize a random number generator when it comes to selecting which USB ports it will use, hence, my nervousness.
Thanks, Mark
I've been using the R200 for 6 months. I simply plugged it in and away it went on my SuSE 9.3. It makes nice color prints as well as the usual BnW. two cautions: 1. I havent been able to get the cd print thingie to work under linux yet although it does beautifully with the other OS. 2. Epson ink is EXPENSIVE and it should be well known by now that you cant use all the ink in the cartridge. Something like 1/3 is not useable. Epson puts out some bullshit about not letting it dry out or some such crap. You can get 3d party cartridges for about 24 bucks a set. The brand I use is G and G. Richard
L. Mark Stone wrote:
My Epson Stylus Color C84 is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm running 9.2 Pro and am looking for a printer YaST supports right out of the box. Both the R200 and the R300 are listed; anyone have any good or bad experiences with these printers?
I have been using (9.3) an R300 for almost 3 months now and it has been working without a glitch. I print photo's with the Gimp and the only thing is that it won't you let use the maximum resolution (like 5600 dpi). But then I found, that 1440 dpi is amply sufficient (and for ordinary photo's 720 dpi quite acceptable). So all in all I'd recommend it, but the ink cartridges aren't cheap. -- Jos van Kan www.josvankan.tk Waiting for the time they give you a printer when you buy a bunch of ink cartridges.
On Tuesday, July 19, 2005 12:32 pm, Jos van Kan wrote:
L. Mark Stone wrote:
My Epson Stylus Color C84 is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm running 9.2 Pro and am looking for a printer YaST supports right out of the box. Both the R200 and the R300 are listed; anyone have any good or bad experiences with these printers?
I have been using (9.3) an R300 for almost 3 months now and it has been working without a glitch. I print photo's with the Gimp and the only thing is that it won't you let use the maximum resolution (like 5600 dpi). But then I found, that 1440 dpi is amply sufficient (and for ordinary photo's 720 dpi quite acceptable). Thanks Jos, I just ordered an R300 from newegg.com.
So all in all I'd recommend it, but the ink cartridges aren't cheap. You can get off-brand cartridges for half price (see www.newegg.com)
Waiting for the time they give you a printer when you buy a bunch of ink cartridges.
The R200 and other models in that price range already sell for just a few dollars more than the retail cost of the ink cartridges, so I think you are done waiting! -- _________________________________________________________ A Message From... L. Mark Stone Reliable Networks of Maine, LLC "We manage your network so you can manage your business." 477 Congress Street Portland, ME 04101 Tel: (207) 772-5678 Web: http://www.rnome.com
On 7/19/05 12:32 PM, "Jos van Kan" <vankan@kabelfoon.nl> wrote:
L. Mark Stone wrote:
My Epson Stylus Color C84 is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm running 9.2 Pro and am looking for a printer YaST supports right out of the box. Both the R200 and the R300 are listed; anyone have any good or bad experiences with these printers?
I have been using (9.3) an R300 for almost 3 months now and it has been working without a glitch. I print photo's with the Gimp and the only thing is that it won't you let use the maximum resolution (like 5600 dpi). But then I found, that 1440 dpi is amply sufficient (and for ordinary photo's 720 dpi quite acceptable). So all in all I'd recommend it, but the ink cartridges aren't cheap.
For ink and toner, I have been using: http://www.imaging-ink.com/ And have been getting good quality. Now, that being said, I have a epson 3000, C40, C42, and a few others I can't remember. Epson really pissed me off when they decided to not support the 3000 in OSX. They were still selling it, years after OSX came out. We in the print industry that have these printers are very upset with epson and feel they have left us out. Yea, I know we can print to it with Cups, but it is no where the same. No adjustments, not like in OS9 or even winblows. Not even close. I used to swear by Epson, now I swear at them. The thing with epson printers, (not sure if it's good or bad) is the print heads aren't ON the cartridges. When you replace the ink in other brands, you are also getting a new print head. With epson, you are not. This is not a big deal until you don't use the printer every day, and the heads clog up. (and yes, it happens with the epson brand ink also) It isn't the wasted ink or money that pisses me off with I try to use my C4* printers, it's the time it takes to clean the heads...sometimes it takes a Q-tip and alcohol to clean things good enough. I can't see spending 30 minutes just to print one item. Maybe HP or someone else has something better? For general color prints, we have gone over to laser and like it so far. Our little cheap ass OKI C5150 printer is fine. (it's not a laser, it's a LED printer - what ever) We also still use our (big old tank) Canon 500 copier w/fiery. It is s l o w but very cheap to use. We have a little Cannon iP 1500 that came free with a ebox we got that out-prints the epsons. Now if we can just replace the 3000 with something that doesn't cost too much. We kind of like to do 12X18 prints that are color correct...17X22 is nice too. Never did a banner with it. You should ask your self with is it about the C84 that isn't "doing it" for you and look for those specific things in a printer. What ever you do, take a laptop into the store and try them with your own files. Even if you have to borrow one, it's worth it. Try before you buy. Even if you only have a file on CD, you can print the same photo out on each printer. Don't go with the default test page (read as pretty picture) the manufactures tweak for their printers. You may never be able to get the same color saturation or contrast with out doing major tweaking. Read that return policy! -- Thanks, George Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil. Jerry Garcia
On Monday 18 July 2005 13:10, L. Mark Stone wrote:
My Epson Stylus Color C84 is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm running 9.2 Pro and am looking for a printer YaST supports right out of the box. Both the R200 and the R300 are listed; anyone have any good or bad experiences with these printers?
I'm a little nervous because these printers seem to be USB printers, and heretofore I've always used either network or parallel printers.
I use USB on this box for UPS management and syncing with my Palm. The UPS works flawlessly, the Palm seems to utilize a random number generator when it comes to selecting which USB ports it will use, hence, my nervousness.
Thanks, Mark
Go get yourself a new C86. Drops right in to replace the C84. New warranty and still parallel. Epson is even offering a $20 rebate until the end of August. That will give you another year or two for about $79. Bob S.
participants (10)
-
B. Stia -
Jon Nelson -
Jos van Kan -
Ken Schneider -
L. Mark Stone -
Paul Cartwright -
Richard -
Richard Atcheson -
suse_gasjr4wd＠mac.com -
Tim Nicholson