Yesterday my new printer arrived.  As I previously blogged, my old Epson Stylus D68 died a while back from an erratic cyan print head, and in absence of a viable fix I ended up buying a replacement.  I have to admit, I did give in to the marketing ploys of eBuyer and chose one of their special offers, but it seemed such a great deal and it had such wonderful reviews that I couldn’t resist.

The Canon PIXMA MP210 is an all-in-one jobbie, which means it’ll print, scan and copy all from one box.  There are several advantages to this approach: (more…)

Funny, isn’t it, how easy it is to get into a rut over the silliest things. For years I have been a great advocate for Epson printers, and have owned them exclusively since my first computer. I have always been reassured by their quality, their resillience, their affordability. Yet, on closer inspection, it would seem these qualities are somewhat unfounded, despite my years of experience with their products.

My first Epson printer was second hand, boxy, slow, and not brilliant quality. That was eventually replaced with a new, more compact model, which served me well for several years until it decided it wanted to retire - without warning or explanation it stopped working, and after much Googling I discovered that cause was an internal counter that had reached its maximum, and the only solution was to send it to an Espon dealer for them to reset it. The cost of sending it to them outweighed the cost of a new printer, so that printer just got stuffed in a box and forgotten. The replacement was slightly bigger, slightly more expensive, and lasted half as long; it’s developed a problem with one of the print heads, whereby the cyan comes out in no particular pattern and ruins every printout that uses colour. I’ve tried cleaning the heads, and got through almost half a cartridge of ink with not a sign of improvement. Since the heads themselves can’t be replaced, that printer has also been taken offline now.

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