Epson C80 Falls Short of Expectations
Written: Jun 02 '02
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Pros: Separate ink cartridges
Cons: Wastes ink every time you turn it on
The Bottom Line: I don't recommend the C-80 printer. Ink is wasted every time you turn the printer on, the printer is noisy, and the printing software has its own set of problems.
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| wayne1975's Full Review: Epson Stylus® C80 InkJet Printer |
I was fed up with buying new color ink cartridges with my HP printers just because one color would run out, so I thought I’d try a different brand. Definitely, do not go by whatever another customer or salesperson says because that is unfortunately what I did. Of course, the salesperson will recommend the most expensive printer, and you really have no idea what experience other customers have had with printers. The other customer recommended Epson, and of course the salesman went to one of the more expensive printers at the time. I had printed a test page, and that seemed to be good enough for what I was looking for, but you really have no idea how a printer will function until you test it out on your own system.
Since the time of my purchase, the price has significantly dropped. I was able to get a mail in rebate for the printer, which helped cut down costs.
The printer was easy to setup and install. I liked that there was a hardcopy of the documentation instead of everything being on a CD-ROM.
I dislike the additional applications being loaded just for the printer. There really is no need for an Ink Monitor application or Status Monitor application running. On rare occasion, the Ink Monitor will not load up correctly, and you will have to reboot because the application has locked up.
Every single time you boot up the system, the printer primes itself, and it is a noisy process. The huge problem with the priming is that it wastes quite a lot of ink. I rarely print out anything in color, but the color ink levels were going down ever time I booted up my system because of the priming. I now leave my printer off, so the printer wastes less ink. If you do not let the printer prime itself every week or two, the cartridges get blocked up, and the nozzle cleaning process wastes even more ink. So, the three separate color ink cartridges really don’t come out as being economical because so much ink is wasted. Over time, just by turning the printer on and off can use up all the ink. This was the hugest disappointment in using the printer.
The envelope printing also has flaws. Certain types of envelopes get jammed or caught in the printer. The envelopes seem to catch on the flaps in the part that is fed into the printer first, but it depends on what brand of envelope you’re using. It is kind of a pain to switch the lever to envelopes every time you want to print an envelope, and then you have to switch it back to paper when you’re done.
The software for the printer doesn’t really allow you to play around with the orientation of the envelope, so you’re pretty much stuck using only one method of to feed in envelopes. The changes that you can do with the envelope orientation in applications such as MS Word do not seem to do anything with the C-80.
The clear cover on top of the printer should be renamed to fingerprint and dust collector. The other surfaces of the printer do not show the dust or fingerprints like the cover does. It was a poor choice to use that type of plastic for the cover of the printer.
The print quality of the printer is decent. I wasn’t expecting anything greater in quality than the other printers I had used, and that is pretty much what I had experienced with the C-80. Once the printer is done with priming and actually starts printing, it prints quickly. Of course, changing the print quality to a higher level significantly slows everything down.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 195.29
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
wayne1975
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Reviews written: 1
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