Some of you know that I have been having printer problems. Here are a few things I've learned. I hope this is useful to somebody out there.
1) At epson.com you can buy factory-refurbished printers for about half the retail price with free delivery and a 1yr mfr warranty, and they do come with the ink cartridges and cables. 2) The HP printers where the paper loads from the front and also comes out the front are not good for certain forms like perforated business cards. The 180-degree turn makes the cards break apart and the paper jams, and you have a hell of a time getting it out (in pieces). I also had several other paper feeding problems with the one I bought, picking up several sheets at a time (my personal record was 13) and not always picking it up in the same place, causing forms like checks and shipping labels not to line up properly. 3) The HP "Vivera" inks are not as saturated in color as Epson's "DuraBrite" inks, and the printing on mine was also not as sharp as the Epson. 4) The HP printer did not come with a USB cable and only came with "starter cartridges" that ran out in less than a week. Obviously the plan here is to get you to buy more ink right away since the markup on the ink is what they make most of their money on. The Epson printers come with the cable and also with full ink cartridges. 5) There are several web pages that show how to clean the Epson printer head if it clogs, and you can even buy a cleaning cartridge that is supposedly the same thing they use at Epson to clear a clogged print head. This looks like an ink cartridge but it has some sort of solvent in it instead of ink. Unfortunately I took mine apart and really screwed it up before I knew this. Otherwise I could have probably fixed it. 6) Another bad thing about Epson printers is that some models are known for having a problem with the "ink purge tube" disconnecting itself over time, which will make it stop printing. There are also web pages that show how to reconnect it if that happens. Hopefully that has been solved on newer models. This did not happen on mine. 7) Epson's help site worked great and I got an immediate reply. Sending a support message through the HP site resulted in an error message and I never got a reply. I have to say that despite the head clogging problem I am going to buy another Epson (refurbished) and just be more diligent about cleaning the head once in a while "whether it needs it or not". Again, I apologize for the OT post and I am not really trying to start a big discussion on this, but hopefully some of you can benefit from what I learned the hard way. John Nasta
