About a Year ago I needed a Printer that could print to CD's and DVD's and I needed one quick.
I had a bad experience with Epson a few Years back as to the Ink Tanks leaking, but that was almost 5 Years prior to me needing another Printer.
I’ve always used HP Printers with no problems, every one I’ve ever had I eventually just wore it out mechanically.
Anyway, the only HP Printer available at the Time that could print direct to Disc was very expensive so I opted to get the Epson Stylus Photo R260.
I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality seeing as it wasn’t a real Wallet burner.
After my project was done I started using it to print some Photo proofs and it really looked good, even at 8X10 the quality was exceptional.
It was so good in fact that here in the last few Weeks I was looking into getting a professional grade A3+ Printer capable of producing large 13X19 Prints and the Epson Stylus Photo R2880 was my first choice, until this past Week.
In the past Year I’ve went through about 3 sets of Ink Cartridges so I really wasn’t using it as my primary Printer for Photography. The HP Photosmart 8450 was my primary Printer because I do allot of B&W Photography and anyone who knows the 8450 understands the awesome job it does at producing excellent B&W Prints but I digress.
My R260 was running very low on just about everything so I spent about $70+ for the Color Kit and a Black ink Tank.
When I got Home and installed them, the Epson control Panel popped up and said the Ink Cartridges where incompatible, huh?...
I tried everything to get it to work. I even spent an Hour on the Phone with Tech support. They had me dig the old Cartridges out of the Trash and replace the new ones, no such luck. Their suggestion was to get it to a service center but knowing it would cost more to fix than just get a new one the Tech on the Phone started telling me about their new line of Printers and how if I purchased one TODAY, he would waive Shipping and Handling…
After getting off the phone I started researching the R260 online and found some very interesting info.
Epson has done some re-programming of the tiny Chips inside the Ink Cartridges to “Stop 3rd Party inferior products from infiltrating their line of Printers”.
Come to find out, the Firmware inside the R260 and apparently several other models has Code that stops the Printer from working after a certain number of Print, passes of the Print Head and number of Cartridges reach a certain Number. They have also, in the re-programming of the Cartridge Chip have updated some Code that the older Printers will not recognize and thus pop up with the message “Incompatible Cartridges”.
In essence, Epson has set a limit on how much or how long Customers can use their Printers to keep them coming back to buy more often.
This does it with me and Epson…
I hate this because Epson really makes an excellent product and I really like the Print quality, just not the under handed "Secret" way they try to manipulate Consumers. We all know what this is about, Ink sales. I know they make most of their Money on Ink sales and quite frankly I'd never buy 3rd party Ink just because it's quality is very poor compared to the manufacturers. This includes HP, Canon and all the other Printer manufacturers. You'll never get the Color quality or archival longevity out of 3rd party Ink, that's why it's so much less expensive, duh...
All I can say is I hope that HP doesn’t start doing this with their products.
Looks like I’ll be getting the HP Photosmart Pro B9180 and never look back.
Oh and by the way, my HP 8450. I’ve had it for about 4 Years now and after numerous sets of Ink Cartridge replacements too many to count and Thousands of Prints, it STILL works like a Champ. Take heed Epson…