Massive Espon rant(bad/good) page here...

[Ron Marshall]

I write this with the smell of fixer still on my hands, but how much does it cost to put inks in these inkjet printers, such as the Epson 2200, etc. Are the inks very expensive, and how many, say, 8x10 prints could you crank out before going back to the store for more ink?
I don't know very much about digital output, but would like to explore it a little more.

If you print frequently then a continuous inking system, CIS, may be worthwhile to lower costs. There are a few on the market from about $100 to $250, last time I checked. The ink cost in bulk is about 20 to 25% of the cost in carts.

[keith english]

When i got my 2200 on ebay used it had set a while with ink in it. A few cleaning cycles didn't work until it had sat overnight. That took care of it, and I think I have had one head clog in 2 years. I think the trick is to do a head clean cycle then let it sit several hours. I guess the head sort of soaks clean.

[Tim Lookingbill]

That's good to know, Keith. I've had my Epson 1270 in the closet for at least 5 years and have been wondering what to expect.

I've been using my local minilab for my prints for this little but expensive hobby of mine. Minilab's a lot easier to deal with.

[eric black]

I have had a 9600 for over 2 years now and have had zero problems with the print heads (knock on wood). Also made a move with it which was not quite a traumatic as another mentioned but after 3 months of no use and the move the printer fired up and printed with no problems on the first try. With the prices you can seem to get these for on ebay lately (1/2 what I paid) they seem like one of the best deals out there.

[Paul Coppin]

I've only have had two Epsons over the past 10 years - an old Stylus 700 (which is still running, although its hard to get ink and paper consistently for it - its very paper fussy). I have a couple of Canons as well, and in the cheap class my IP5000 has been hard to beat. I added a R2400 recently and its impressive. My beef with Epson is that the printers (including the r2400) are no very robust in construction compared to Canon, but when properly set up, they perform (as do the Canons). I may have just hit a snag with a little portable Canon I use with my laptop - it apparently has a little "drip tank" that collects waste ink from cleaning cycles buried somewhere in its innards, that when full, shuts down the printer TOTALLY. Also apparently requires a service call to change and there is no supplied documentation to assist in managing this (other than taking it into a Canon service shop somewhere). The web fixes I've tried so far have not worked.
Built-in enforced redundancy? I'm not convinced that's its worth it to service it given the cost of new ones, but I'm mighty pissed I can't appear to fix this myself.

[chinpokojed]

We've had pretty good luck with Epson's stuff..

Our 9600 we just about ran into the ground with ~4 years of heavy usage (was probably printing an average of 10 hours a day, 5 days a week for those years). We replaced the capping station on it once, and in the end ran into a head clog we just could not clear.

Replaced it with a 9800 and it has been even better. We can literally put a roll of 44" x 40' canvas on it, queue up enough stuff to use the whole roll, then leave. Fast, quiet, reliable, and relatively inexpensive, a tough combo to beat.

..Of course the new 60" Canon is quite the temptation..