Rating: 
Summary: Bummer
Review: I bought this printer about 1 1/2 years ago. I had owned an Epson Stylus 600 before that and had been MORE than pleased with it. It was an EXCELLENT printer. THIS ONE, howerver, IS HORRIBLE!!! I have to set it to the highest resolution to get simple black and white text to appear somewhat crisp. I have used the utility monitor numerous times to align nozzles, clean nozzles, etc- to no avail. Forget even printing in colour..... I am currently shopping for a Cannon or HP to replace this expensive dud.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of time & money
Review: I bought this printer about 18 months ago. When it works, it works great. HOWEVER, changing ink cartridges is a long process because the carrier won't line up where it should. It stays offline & needs to be shut-down & restarted numerous times before the ink cartridge change process can be completed. The printer shuts down when the ink is low & it makes you change all the cartridges when one is low before it will function again. The black ink pooled at the bottom on two occasions. The head & nozzle cleaner utilities are ineffective. The nozzles are always getting clogged even with daily use of the printer. I just spent $71.16 for ink cartridges, replaced them all, & the printer still won't print. I'm taking the cartridges back to the store for a refund & I'm replacing the printer with a Canon. I will never buy Epson again. This Epson printer has cost me way too much time & money.
Rating:
Summary: Ink Dumping is Right!!!
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This is exactly what happen to me!"I bought the printer in November 2001 for home use. I typically do not print more than 20 pages per week. The printer worked fine until about a month ago when I discovered a pool of ink at the bottom of printer. I assumed it was a faulty ink cartridge, cleaned it up and bought a new cartridge. I have ink at the bottom of the printer again. I contacted Epson. After a couple of emails, they suggested that I call their tech support line. That would cost $10 just to talk to them. The printer goes in the garbage and I am replacing it with an HP." The dates may be different, but the model and problems are exactly the same, write down to the $10.00 service call. What a racket! The warranty was for a year and that is as long as the printer lasted. I will never buy an Epson again, but I won't buy an HP either.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Buy this Printer!
Review: The Epson c80 printer is designed to suck money out of you! The printing is OK, black and white printing is not as crisp as my HP PSC500, however it prints much better color prints than the HP. Why does the Epson c80 suck money out of you? Epson was very clever to make the printer shut down when it is low on Ink, say you are printing a document in black only, if you run low on red or yellow ink the printer will stop, you will not be able to finish printing your document. Then when you change the ink cartridge you will find the document you wanted to print has been lost. You will also notice that the Ink cartridge that the printer said was empty, makes a sloshing sound if you shake it, it still has some ink in the cartridge! I question if epson has programed the printer to shut down if the cartridge is in fact low. I also have an HP PSC500. you can print documents until the Ink is Empty. It will not shut down if you run low on colored Ink. All things considered the HP is a better value, and printer.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a Great Printer!
Review: The ouput print quality is terrific for the price, and best of all this printer is VERY quiet. I have owned Epson for years now and think they are the best. And they also have very good printer drivers. One thing however, I am very skeptical about putting compatible' replacement cartridges in an Epson printer. I had an early Stylus Color model that was superb and I ruined it because I did not put original Epson ink cartridges in it. This printer however, I was forced to one day when I ran out of ink during an important print job I was doing. I used compatible ink cartridges and everything was fine. Whew! Works Great with NT 4.0 systems too.
Rating: 
Summary: After 1 year of use...
Review: Yes, the output can be great. And, based on extensive fading tests I've conducted, the pigment-based inks last and last (try leaving non-pigment inks on the dashboard of your car in the Florida sun for 6 months). BUT.
1 out of 3 prints OR MORE needs re-printing due to clogged nozzles. You can't unclog the print heads if any cartridge is low, but then you can't print what you want with clogged heads - so when ink is low, you have to replace it even if you could otherwise print 2-3 more documents. Re-aligning print heads can take an hour or more. Why can't they do simple straight lines for horizontal print alignment, rather than judging banding on a series of adjacent blocks? Ink is expensive, and the printer sucks it up fast if you print on photo paper. The good news is that the tanks are big, and individual tanks for different colors. Due to my photography, I use up black and magenta twice as fast as the other two (but if cyan or yellow are low, and I know I only need magenta and black, still can't clean the heads - see above). The bottom line? Epson got it wrong. And the real evidence of this is their rush to get out the C82, replacement model for the C80. It's rare for them, but they did. DON'T GET A C80.
Rating:
Summary: Buy a Hewlett Packard
Review: For years I owned and enjoyed, problem free, differing Hewlett Packard printers. When we upgraded our computer system over a year ago, I followed the recommendations of an online site and purchased and Epson C80 instead of an HP. About 6 months after purchasing the Epson I started experiencing serious problems with poor print quality and clogged nozzles. I just wasted a complete set of black and colored cartridges while trying to "unclog" the nozzles and clean the print heads. I went online to read if others have experienced this same problem with the C80, and sure enough, there are MANY, MANY others who are complaining of the same problem. Quick fix? Buy a new printer. I'll never use any other printer than an HP again. What a costly mistake this has been.
Rating:
Summary: Education in Frustration
Review: The good things about the Epson C80 don't outweigh the bad. Yes, I got nice, crisp printouts of my school papers. I even got semi-good printouts of diagrams & schematics. However, Gantt charts, spreadsheets, & especially graphs were awful in varying aspects. Gantt charts would get odd ASCII characters mixed in w/the legend or worse--symbols matched w/the wrong description--spreadsheets had 'ghost' outlines of the cell borders, & graphs looked like the colour ink cartridge chundered its contents! Sure, it quietly prints, but loading, feeding, starting & ending the print process sounded like a weapons lock n' load sequence from The Matrix! More still, the Epson installer slips in 3 monitoring applications that hog memory & eat processor power. Of course, all of the above was *after* I got the thing to actually work. Installation was SNAFUBAR fugly out of the box. I'm an IT student/geek, so I know the value & rule of Read The Frigging Manual (RTFM), ergo, I familiarised myself w/the install process--total KISS--& followed the instructions. I was using a Windows 2000 (W2k) machine w/up-to-date service packs, driver updates, current BIOS flash, & w/the proper services running. No matter what I did--from remedial to advanced troubleshooting--I couldn't get W2k to recognise a printer was hooked up to any of the Universal Serial Bus ports (USB). I checked connexions, I checked that I had the correct type of USB cable; I checked that my cards were secure, stable, & firm. I deleted drivers, I rolled-back to previous drivers, I installed the latest & greatest drivers, & I direct installed the .inf from the disk. I tried everything w/the W2k & XP drivers & still no bueno. W2k could see something, but what it saw, it didn't like. Thinking it might be a W2k issue I started working the listserves & newsgroups. Everything I'd already tried was suggested--much to consternation of serious W2k gurus. I finally gave up & contacted tech support for the machine. Again, I ran the gamut of checking cables, installing, deleting, etc. The tech working w/me was pretty darned sharp & finally gave up in exasperation--not @ me, but the silly Epson printer--& recommended I contact Epson. Pointless. That's all I have to say about Epson tech support. After running through the *exact* same troubleshooting steps in the printer manual--all the way up to contacting Epson support--the tech diagnosed it as a W2k problem & to call Microsoft (MS). That wasn't a satisfactory answer so I requested escalation to Level II. The tech's response was classic: "What's escalation & where is Level II?" Oy Vey. After explaining this rather standard concept for trouble calls, the tech claimed there was no such beast & insisted it was a Microsoft issue. Riiiiight. No Level II @ *EPSON*? Pay a ridiculous fee so an MS advisor can tell me it's a vendor issue? C'mon Epson! Why is it W2k can see the USB & knows something's there, but can't execute the primitive? I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but I know OEM problem when I see one & this wasn't an OEM issue. This is just bad coding & configuration on the part of Epson. Of course offering me a replacement printer &/or installer cd was a tip off; Epson has a known problem but isn't about to admit such a thing. Fortunately, the C80 is USB *&* parallel port enabled. Having a few parallel port cables about the house, I popped one in, & the machine downloaded the drivers w/o a single complaint. Ok, so I gave up a little speed, but hey, I don't have rush print jobs. I called Epson, told them to not worry about the new printer & I'd be fine w/the parallel port connexion. Then I got to experience all the little things that bugged me about the C80. My big complaint w/any printer is the software--beyond install issues. I don't want a bunch of processor munching print monitor services snacking on my resources. Ergo, w/a W2k box, I've got to edit the registry to keep these things from running--they're not available for configuration through component management. All printer manufacturers should really step forward to write these memory & CPU hogging services as on-demand processes rather than dumping a bunch of background-running programmes on machines. Heck it printed my reports just fine, I'm comfortable w/the registry so I fixed the software annoyance, I could live w/the cell ghosting, the graphs I could fudge a bit w/the print settings & use lighter colours, & even the operational noises were tolerable. But, when the wonkiness w/the Gantt charts cost me a full letter grade on an assignment, I got fed up! Ergo, I sold this thing in the Amazon marketplace--unfortunately the warranty had expired by this time so I couldn't get a replacement; not that I'd want another Epson C80--& bought what every good geek should have, a Hewlett Packard (HP). Yes, I know HPs have tiny ink cartridges; but the print quality, ease of install--working on the same USB port & cable the Epson wouldn't recognise thank you very much--low profile, & compact design of the HP Deskjet 3650, make the ink cartridge life well worth the price of convenience. Since, my spreadsheets no longer have ghosting, my graphs are clean using any combo of colours, my diagrams & schematics are clearer if anything, my school papers are just fine, & Gantts look professional--& more importantly, the HP 3650 hasn't cost me a letter grade. I've read the other reviews, & it seems those who like the C80, really like the printer--but they didn't have the issues I experienced. I personally had no luck w/the C80--not to mention the ineffectual support from Epson--& recommend staying away from the it unless you're looking for a quick education in frustration. --Joe Vaughn
Rating:
Summary: Epson C80 ink is expensive. It's a money pit.
Review: The cartridges do not hold much ink, are expensive, and the printer refuses to print if one of the 4 cartridges is low or out. Even if you don't care if color is off or the document doesn't use that color... If you want to spend your life enslaved to replacing ink cartridges or earning ink cartridge money, then go buy this printer. Print quality and speed are good...
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: I write this as a graphic artist who has worked in the print industry for 5 years. I'm not just an at home freelancer. This never produced "photo quality" pictures. It was okay for printing text but it is not for a true graphic artist of photographer. My first serious problems started exactly one week after the one year warranty expired. Banding problems, ink pools on glossy paper, constantly have to realign and clean print heads. Not to mention having to replace the ink every three months. Now I have just replaced all the ink cartridges and it is just spitting out blank sheets of paper. Customer support is useless, they just brag that they have the best products. Judging from the comments I read on other sites, many people have had the exact same problems.
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