Rating: 
Summary: FRICKIN INK HOGGGGGGGG!!!
Review: 4 months later... This printer is a mother sucker!!! hee hee
I found great ink cartriges at printpal.com, just make sure you specify 820 PHOTO stylus!!!! and if you want to REALLY save money you can check out alotofthings.com for REFILLABLES!!! at alotofthings, the lady Tesha who works there is a genius and she's very nice and accomodating. They have tons of info on the new INK HOG you just bought called the EPSON 820 photo stylus. Epson customer service is COMPLETELY uncaring they won't even tell you WHY these ink hogs have a CHIP in the cartridge that tells the printer that you're quote out of ink unquote. This is a total sham to clean your pockets out! that's why the printer is so cheap!! (think airfilters) There's ink in that cartridge as the day is long I'll guarantee it. Go to alotofthings.com and read about epson printers and chip based cartridges. you'll learn! If there were 0 stars I'd give it one.The one good thing is that the photos are UNBELIEVABLE! I'll happily contribute ink to them! You gotta use epson paper because they also have the printer set up to screw up if you use anyone else's photo paper. bastards :) I will never purchase another epson chip cartridge printer again. Pain in my neck!
Rating:
Summary: FRICKIN INK HOGGGGGGGG!!!
Review: 4 months later... This printer is a mother!!! hee hee
I found great ink cartriges at printpal.com, just make sure you specify 820 PHOTO stylus!!!! and if you want to REALLY save money you can check out alotofthings.com for REFILLABLES!!! at alotofthings, the lady Tesha who works there is a genius and she's very nice and accomodating. They have tons of info on the new INK HOG you just bought called the EPSON 820 photo stylus. Epson customer service is COMPLETELY uncaring they won't even tell you WHY these ink hogs have a CHIP in the cartridge that tells the printer that you're quote out of ink unquote. This is a total sham to clean your pockets out! that's why the printer is so cheap!! (think airfilters) There's ink in that cartridge as the day is long I'll guarantee it. Go to alotofthings.com and read about epson printers and chip based cartridges. you'll learn! If there were 0 stars I'd give it one.
The one good thing is that the photos are UNBELIEVABLE! I'll happily contribute ink to them! You gotta use epson paper because they also have the printer set up to screw up if you use anyone else's photo paper. bastards :) I will never purchase another epson chip cartridge printer again. Pain in my neck!
Rating:
Summary: Stay away
Review: At first I thought this was a great buy. This printer eats ink like crazy. When my printer quit on me after only 6 months of use, epson was kind enough to send me a "refurbished" printer that did not last long at all, but was only under warranty for 90 days. I don't understand why they would send me a refurbished printer, when I bought a new printer. I thin I would rather have my printer fixed. Anyway, I replaced with Canon i860 and I am very happy with it.
Rating:
Summary: Clogged printer head
Review: Epson thought their unique print head design would set their products apart, allowing superior quality prints. Instead, it's their printers' Achilles heel: because the print heads are not part of the ink cartridge, you can't just switch cartridges to fix a messed-up print head, and there's no way to get at the heads to clean them manually. With Epson printers, when your heads are badly clogged, there's not much you can do except bring it to a repair shop. Maybe not even that. This printer has had chronic problems with clogging, constantly showing stripes of missing color. The heads have needed to be cleaned almost every time I've printed anything, and I've spent at least 1/3 of each (expensive) ink cartridge just cleaning the heads, that process uses amazing amounts of ink. This week, the heads seem to be permanently gunked shut. I hadn't printed anything in color in about 5 weeks, and each of the five colors is now either stripey or completely blocked, no matter how many times I run the "clean" routine. Another stupid design choice: when just one of the 5 colors of ink runs out, you have to replace ALL FIVE. That's ridiculous. Unless you're Epson and want to make a killing on ink sales, that is. Save yourself a lot of trouble, and avoid poorly designed printers -- like this one.
Rating:
Summary: Constantly clogged print heads
Review: Epson thought their unique print head design would set their products apart, allowing superior quality prints. Instead, it's their printers' Achilles heel: because the print heads are not part of the ink cartridge, you can't just switch cartridges to fix a messed-up print head, and there's no way to get at the heads to clean them manually. With Epson printers, when your heads are badly clogged, there's not much you can do except bring it to a repair shop. Maybe not even that. This printer has had chronic problems with clogging, constantly showing stripes of missing color. The heads have needed to be cleaned almost every time I've printed anything, and I've spent at least 1/3 of each (expensive) ink cartridge just cleaning the heads, that process uses amazing amounts of ink. This week, the heads seem to be permanently gunked shut. I hadn't printed anything in color in about 5 weeks, and each of the five colors is now either stripey or completely blocked, no matter how many times I run the "clean" routine. Another stupid design choice: when just one of the 5 colors of ink runs out, you have to replace ALL FIVE. That's ridiculous. Unless you're Epson and want to make a killing on ink sales, that is. Save yourself a lot of trouble, and avoid poorly designed printers -- like this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent basic printer for home use
Review: Excellent print quality and easy to use (especially on a Mac). The real cost of this printer (as with most inkjets) is the ink, not the machine and this one sucks the stuff down. Not the fastest printer on the block, but pretty good for low production work. 8x10s printed on Epson Premium Semi-Gloss are truly stunning, and have so far held up with no visible signs of fading or color shift (framed, and under glass). In the sub-$100 category, this is pretty much as good as it gets, and it rivals the quality from many at double the price. If you can afford a couple hundred dollars more, you will get a lot more machine, and a lot better quality, but this may be all that you need.
Rating: 
Summary: Incredible value--no problem at all
Review: First of all, if you want a general printer that you can use to print documents and spreadsheets, don't get this printer. This is a PHOTO printer (hint from its name) it's designed to print PHOTOS. So don't be surprised if it is an ink hog (which it is). It's like buying a muscle car or a SUV and complain about it's gas mileage. Another thing to keep in mind is that even though you can't change the individual colors in the 5 colors (not 3 colors!) cartridge, it is very unlikely to run out of ink in one color while there is plenty of other colors' ink, unless you keep on printing similar color photos (like you only print sunset or ocean photos). If you print all kind of photos, it won't be a problem. Ink cartridges are about average priced, there are other cheap ones but I have not tried those yet. I have been using this printer for a few months already, yet I have not seen any clogging problem as mentioned by others and now Epson has released a new driver and this printer is supposed to be able to print 5760x720 dpi. The prints are absolutely amazing (especially for a printer at this price), the 6 color cartridge really made the difference. I am currently taking a photography class, and have to make prints all the time, even my instructor was surprised by how good the quality of the prints are from a printer in this price range. I have tried a bunch of photo papers, from the cheap CompUSA to Kodak paper, but Epson's own photo paper seems to work best with this printer. I haven't noticed the noise problem as well, it is just as noisy as other printers that I have used before. But it is kind of slow, I only have USB 1.1, but I think even with 2.0, the speed won't improve much. UPDATE: I had purposely left it untouched for more than a month (all I did was kept the cover up), and just printed a few photos, there was absolutly no clogging whatsever, the prints look as good as ever.
Rating: 
Summary: You get what you pay for
Review: For $50 you can't really complain too much. The print quality is really good but the print heads tend to fail. When I called to return my second one the operator said she had the same problem with hers, either the color or the black cartridge will just stop working. I can't imagine you'll find a better quality print for the money but don't expect longevity.
Rating:
Summary: Prints are great.
Review: For this $ you can't complain too much. I read many who say the machine clogs and uses up the ink. I have this printer for 2 days and have printed 5- 8x10's at "Best Qualilty setting". The ink level indicator is only an estimate. It may clog someday, and probably use too much ink. This is why one should not spend too much on inkjets. In addition, images fade. The 27 years or whatever is only if you place them behind glass. The digital cameras and inkjet printers will be what the claims are in 5-10 years or so. NOT NOW. The Epson 820 is nice, sharp, and accurate full color at first try. A print of a black sweater showed texture. (image taken in daylight with 4m megapix. Olympus c4000 at SHQ -jpeg 2 meg-, - )
I would bet the image quality on machines 3x the $ would have the same result in terms of print quality. No frills on this machine. I have not tried text printing. Best to buy a text printer for the same $ that is good for that purpose.
Rating:
Summary: Prints are great.
Review: For this $ you can't complain too much. I read many who say the machine clogs and uses up the ink. I have this printer for 2 days and have printed 5- 8x10's at "Best Qualilty setting". The ink level indicator is only an estimate. It may clog someday, and probably use too much ink. This is why one should not spend too much on inkjets. In addition, images fade. The 27 years or whatever is only if you place them behind glass. The digital cameras and inkjet printers will be what the claims are in 5-10 years or so. NOT NOW. The Epson 820 is nice, sharp, and accurate full color at first try. A print of a black sweater showed texture. (image taken in daylight with 4m megapix. Olympus c4000 at SHQ -jpeg 2 meg-, - )
I would bet the image quality on machines 3x the $ would have the same result in terms of print quality. No frills on this machine. I have not tried text printing. Best to buy a text printer for the same $ that is good for that purpose.
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