Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful prints, intermittent installation
Review: Just had this printer a couple weeks now, and finally completed making it so that it prints from my home PC via Parallel, and Laptop via USB.
Prints are great! So far I have only had the opportunity to burn up some Coated 8.5 x 11 sheets on pictures and some graphics, plus a plain paper envelope or two. No problem as long as the driver installed properly.I was debating and debating between the C80 and the 785EPX for quite some time, and as an avid digital photo geek, it was a tough choice - archival with individual durable inks - or the 785EPX with the edge to edge, card support, 2 extra colors, and 4x6 rolls. Well I still feel that the extra two colors are unnecessary - just a way to sell more ink (the money's in the blades son). And I have no issue viewing my pictures on the computer prior to wasting more of that precious commodity. So I went for the C80, and I'm delighted with my decision. Who needs two extra colors and wet edges. For really special prints I go to shutterfly.com anyway. So here's my driver advice:
My W98 (1'st edition) home PC installed without issue, and printed from the Parallel port without complaint.
On the other side, I was attempting to attach my work W2k laptop to the USB, and ran into difficulty. I believe the issue is that I needed to install "USB printer support" from my system prior to it allowing the Epson printer drivers. This issue was not listed in the instructions - neither the "read me first" nor the full documentation. It only needs to be done once, which explains why some see it and others do not. When it asks you to cancel the HW detection, don't cancel out of the "USB Printer Support" Hardware detection. Let it install the built-in Windows drivers for USB printers, then it goes on to install the actual printer - which you do from the CD (or downloaded drivers). Other than that... One theory I have for so many drivers issues with the other users is that it is a good idea to uninstall any pervious Local Printers on the system. These programs tend to run in the background and "lock in" your LPT settings - like that little ink monitor and other icons that like to display in your sys-tray (on the bottom right of your screen). HP and Epson both seem to have these background programs. So if you had a HP previously, and didn't uninstall first, then it could still be hanging on to your port settings. My previous model was a Canon - BJC4300 which died when I had amassed over a hundred bucks on ink - always had to have some on hand, because it gave you no warning when it was going to start printing funny stripy pictures. But then again, it had no little TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident - don't you wish that your boss would say that to you?) program to foul up the Epson installation. I've seen this type of driver issue repeatedly - one of my past lives involved troubleshooting people's computers. There once was a "Winnie the Pooh" doll that attached to the parallel printer so the kiddies could program it to read them stories. Well this one customer could only get Pooh to speak in tongues that sounded kind of like a modem - you should have seen what a sight it was to see Winnie moving his lips to the sound of "EEEEkakakaka". Anyway the issue was the LPT Port was "captured" by the Epson printer driver. The customer had deleted all the Epson printer files already so it was too late to uninstall. We had to re-install the Epson Driver - from the printer which was now returned back to the store - and then uninstall that driver. Nice printer other than that. It's not a quiet as an HP, but it shouldn't jam up as much either. Sounds very "professional". Plus the "smoothness" of the 3 picoliter drops is better than HP. After maybe 8 pages of full color photo's the ink is still way over 90% - much better than the Canon would have been at this point. Good luck with the drivers...
Marc
P.S. W2k uses the XP driver I believe.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Product at a Great Price
Review: I have both Canon and HP printers in addition to this Epson and I belive that the Epson is far superior to both of the others. The speed at which this thing prints is absolutely amazing. The ink that it uses is called DuraBrite and is exclusive to Epson. You can pour water on it or rub it as soon as it comes out of the printer and it will not bleed. I've got to say that the HP 990cse is slightly better at printing 4x6 photos and the text is slightly sharper but it's slower and costs [price]. The Canon S630 is a fine printer but it costs [price], is slower and is thirsty on ink. I've only needed to call Technical Support for my HP and that was for a question, not a problem so I can't comment there. Buy this printer. I love it and you will too.
Rating:
Summary: Close to perfection
Review: Epson's Stylus C80 is a great printer. The printing speed is very fast, it took only 30 seconds to print out a full color 8x10 photograph in economy mode. Some users repot that this printer has a loud paper feed mechanism, and it does. Epson rates this printer as having a 42dB sound intesity rating during it's loudest operation, feeding the paper. But, the Epson C60 had a 47dB rating so the C80 really is an improvement. The C80 also is the first of the C-series to feature pigment based inks, which in my experience with this printer, are working very well. Linux users will be especially pleased with this printer as it is [one of] the most suggested printer[s] for use with Linux (...), and with the new Gimp-Print 1.2.0 drivers, this printer is fully supported and it's quality in Linux (2880x1440) now surpasses that of the Windows drivers (2880x720). And with the fast spool speeds available over USB in Windows, Macintosh, and Linux, who can argue that this is the fastest, and highest quality mid-rage inkjet on the market?
Rating: 
Summary: Customer Support Stinks
Review: Its my findings that have led me to this review. If you should have the good fortune to get through you warranty period with your product> Then watch out, here is when the printer will cost you. If you have a question regarding your product from EPSON, it will cost you $9.95 a pop for a question. Even if it is only (HOW DO I CHANGE MY INK CARTRIDGE ). Their corporate guidelines mandate that they charge you ten bucks to answer that question. Or any question if your product is out of warranty. For this I wish I had never bought my printer from them. Along with tiresome calibration sequences that the thing goes through every time that you turn the thing on, even if it was earlier the same day. My printer does not seem to user friendly, and I feel hassled every time that I go to use it.
Rating: 
Summary: If you are a gluttin for punishment then this one is for you
Review: I purchased this printer because I needed an ink that would not smear. The ink is wonderful. But help you if you need customer support. They were very unhelpful with my problem of the printer printing lines through my pictures and documents. After 20 min on hold, (not an 800 number either) the support person was ungracious, and unhelpful. I would have been much better off just buying the replacement ink for my Lexmark Z42, a printer from which I had no problems. The Epson prints very slow through the parallel port, the settings for Higher and Lower resolution are hard to navigate, and it feeds itself 3 or 4 sheets at a time making printing truly a chore.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent quality
Review: I purchased the C80 recently, based almost solely on the manufacturer-touted advantages of this printer (versus the higher cost of the competition's comparable printers), and of course swayed somewhat by the rebate. All I can say is that I'm very impressed overall, and the slight annoyances I've encountered are EXACTLY the same ones pointed out by other reviewers: no 4X6 photo size in the printer options, SLOW spooling process, annoying graphical printer status window, and NOISY paper feed mechanism. But none of these annoyances is bad enough to keep me from recommending this printer. Long term durability will be the question. An early version of the Stylus series developed an uncorrectable problem with clogging jets, which caused me to scrap it after about a year and a half. But I have to imagine Epson has done a good job addressing these types of problems in the years since then. Oh, yeah, let me add that installation was a breeze on my Win98 machine w/ 350mhz P2, so I'm not sure why others state there were install problems. None here.
Rating:
Summary: Epson C80
Review: This printer is very fast when it actually starts printing, but if you print a lot of one page items like I do, it takes forever to spool and I'm getting about 2 pages a minute in black, because of the long spool time. And, an annoying pop up screen comes up when it's printing that I have to minimize each time so I can continue in my application. Also, it will not print from DOS programs even though the manual says it will, I called tech support and they said that this printer is not set up to print from DOS applications. Overall, fast printer and quiet printing but very noisy paper feed.
Rating:
Summary: The Good, the bad and the ugly
Review: The Good: The print quality is excellent. I love the dura-brite inks - they are instantly waterproof and smudge proof. The printer is very fast once it starts printing, but seem to take longer than previous Epsons to begin printing.
The Bad: The paper feed mechanism is VERY noisy. If you are used to buying inexpensive clone cartridges, you can say goodbye to that idea.
The Ugly: The C80 is a big ugly box.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent four color photo printer for the money
Review: I've been using Epson Stylus Color printers for awhile, originally the Stylus 740, and recently the 777i printer. Each has been impressive in the print quality, especially photos. I decided to make the leap and upgrade to the Stylus C80 printer, in part due to the $30 rebate offered. Setup was very easy as is with most Epson printers. I use it with a USB cable to my Apple iBook computer and had no trouble with installing and using the printer drivers. As a matter of fact, these drivers are nearly identical to the ones used for the Stylus 777i. I have also used the Printer Sharing function built into the driver and now print wirelessly from my iBook to this printer - COOL!!! The print quality is excellent and speeds are noticeably faster than my 777i printer. The best improvement was the reduced noise during printing, it is much more quiet! I did notice that there is a considerable difference in photo print appearance between the C80 and the 740/777i depending on the type of paper used. Previously, I have used the Epson 4x6 photo paper with very good results- on the C80 however, the prints appears somewhat washed out and dull. Using Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper produces much better results as does Kodak Premium Picture Paper (for less $$$ than Epson). I was also perplexed at the limited paper sizes supported by the drivers, 4x6 print is missing and must be user defined. Mac OS X drivers are due out on Oct. 22 so I am looking forward to testing those as well. I recommend this printer for fast, quiet photo quality printing for a budget price.
Rating:
Summary: Best desktop inkjet you can buy
Review: This is by far the best inkjet I have ever used… Unlike another reviewer, I had no problems whatsoever getting this printer installed and working. I can’t imagine the install being much easier. The drivers work very well with Windows 98 as they do with Win2k, Winxp and NT4.
The print speeds are incredible! I can’t believe it prints this fast while maintaining such a high quality output. The print speed has also improved a lot with mixed text/graphic pages. It seems to recognize that the text portion doesn’t need the same speed of the images and prints them much faster. I like the separate ink cartridges, as you can replace each color independently. Canon has had this feature for the longest time, and I am glad to see Epson finally adding it. Time will tell if this makes it much cheaper than before. The image quality is great! They have improved the plain paper printing quality from the last Epson printer I have used. On photo quality paper, it’s amazing! The picture quality is also much better than you get with latest HP printers, which tend to have grainy images when compared to the C80. The only thing I don’t like is the styling. The previous printers look much better to me than the C80. And what’s with the naming scheme? So far, I have enjoyed this incredibly fast printer....
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