The Stylus CX7800 is a relatively new printer that specializes in scanning photographs and old negatives. So, it is geared towards those who have old photo collections (slides, negatives, transparencies) that they want to preserve or reproduce. Sounds pretty good, since for all the home photo printers and all-in-one machines there are these days, there aren’t a ton that are good for scanning photos and negatives. Well, the CX7800 was just reviewed today by CNET and they definitely were not impressed. Their summary was this:

The Epson CX7800 all-in-one is remarkably easy to use. Too bad its photo printing is merely average and its print speeds are ridiculously slow.

They only gave this printer a 6.3 rating. Now sometimes you have to take that number with a grain of salt, but so far the only user ratings for it have amounted to an average of 5.8. When both ratings are that low, you know something isn’t right. Their main problem with the CX7800 was the print quality and speed, two things that some might consider reasonably important as far as inkjet printers go. The scanning features seem to work okay, but have a great scanned copy of your picture might not be enough to satisfy most people.

If any of our readers owns an Epson Stylus CX7800, we would like to hear some comments from you. Prove this CNET review wrong. Or, just jump on the bandwagon and tell everyone to avoid this printer.

Epson Stylus CX7800 Editor’s Review [CNET]

Buy this printer Buy Epson Stylus CX7800 ink cartridges

A month ago, we wrote about how Epson had settled a couple of class action lawsuits over the amount of ink left in their cartridges. Technically if you printer was already registered with Epson, you should have automatically received your credit in the mail. Also, you can still register you printer up until November 13th, 2006 and automatically receive the credit. The June 22nd deadline only applies if you never registered your printer with Epson and don’t want to or else you don’t want the $45 credit and you want one of the other benefits.

So far, based on what we have read on a few different sites, it doesn’t seem like too many people have run into any big problems yet. Hopefully the process is going smoothly for most people. If anybody has had any experiences with this claims process, good or bad, leave us a comment and let us know.

http://www.epsonsettlement.com/

Update - You can visit this page on the official settlement site to be automatically notified when your discount/benefits will become available.

If you have an Epson inkjet printer and have ever received an error message when you try to print that say “there was a problem printing to the port. Check to be sure your printer is configured to use a valid port”, then check out this Q & A to see if any of these solutions help you.

With most error messages, your first step should be to check the connections of the printer, and then to cycle the printer to see if the message gets cleared.

Epson will give out a $45 credit to consumers to settle class-action lawsuits filed against them in California, Texas and New York. The lawsuits argued that a “substantial” amount of ink remained in Epson inkjet cartridges at the time that the printer indicated the cartridge was empty. The settlement applies to anyone who purchased an Epson inkjet printer between April 8, 1999 and May 8, 2006. The $45 credit is for use at Epson’s online store, and can be used on printers, inkjet cartridges or any other products. Also, instead of the $45 credit consumers can choose to receive a $25 check from Epson and a $20 credit for their store, or else a 25% discount ($100 is the max discount) off products at the Epson store.

Now in our opinion, this settlement is kind of lousy. This has always been a big complaint of our customers who use Epson printers and they find it pretty annoying that their printer will basically stop working because it says a cartridge is empty, even though it usually isn’t. Under the terms of the settlement, Epson admits no wrongdoing and will not change any of their technology. They will change their packaging to note that “empty” cartridges are going to still have some ink in them. So the lawyers get their big cut, Epson can say they did nothing wrong, and consumers are left with a credit from a company they may never want to buy from again. It could even prove to be a gain for Epson, if consumers use the $45 credit and then spend additional money or if they elect to take the 25% discount. What is supposed to be a penalty for them could turn into a flood of traffic for their online store.

On a positive note, the settlement is pretty large and the process to claim it does not seem that difficult. This is not the usual class-action settlement where you have to fill out five forms to get your $2 share of the loot. If you registered your printer with Epson, then you will automatically receive the credit. If you haven’t, you can go to http://www.epsonsettlement.com/ and find the claim form there.

The last day to send in a claim form is June 22, 2006.

Class Counsel and Epson America Announce Class Action Settlement [Press Release]

Update 5/30 - Ron, one of our commenters, left this note: “I got this back from Epson about the e-store code: Per this website, the settlement benefits are not distributed until AFTER the court considers final approval on the settlement. The settlement benefits will be available no sooner than the late fall of 2006. Thus, any Epson Store codes will not be activated until after the final settlement.”

This would explain why a lot of people have been wondering about actually using their benefits at the Epson store.

Update 6/1 - Another commenter, Jerry, pointed out this link: E-Store Code Notification. So if you sign up, you will be automatically notified via email or postcard that your code/benefits are ready.

Update 9/18 - The latest news on this case is that the settlement was officially accepted by the Court back on August 15th, so this should mean that everyone’s E-Store codes are valid. If you are still having trouble, you can always try calling 1-877-506-4031, which was a number set up for all class members. There is a pretty long recording that you have to listen to at first, but you could always try hitting 0 to see if an operator appears.

Update 1/22 - http://www.pacificink.com/blog/2007/01/22/epson-settlement-update-2/

Here is a review on the Epson Stylus Photo R340, an updated version of the R320, which came out at the end of 2004. The R340 features a six-color ink system, the ability to print on CDs or DVDs, a 2.4″ LCD screen and the ability to print directly from your camera. This reviewer had given the R320 a look last year, and he believes that the R340 is a pretty solid upgrade, although not worth it if you currently own the R320.

I also found the overall operation of the R340 to be much more quiet in its operation. As the print head glides along, you get a feeling that this printer is a lot tighter in its operation.

So while the printing speed specifications really don’t reflect much of a speed increase, you really do get a feeling that everything is happening much more quickly.

I guess it’s just a quality thing. I’ve seen the same thing with cars. Sometimes it’s just that the newer models only look and feel better but the specifications are actually the same.

He brings up an interesting point - does this printer really have improved performance over the model it replaced, or is it just perception? New printer models are constantly being released, but are they all really better than their predecessors? Probably not. Printer technology has improved greatly over the last few years, but these days it doesn’t improve fast enough to where you are going to see major differences with every new model. There might be a new or improved feature (like the LCD in this case), but what really matters the most is print quality/speed, and that is going to change much unless you are upgrading from a printer that is a couple years old.

Here is a comparison of the two models:

You don’t have to stare at them too long to realize that the actual performance of the machine is exactly the same. Also, since they use the same ink cartridges, it is a safe bet to say that the results of each machine will be the same. Just from looking at the two machines, the R340 is an improved design and looks much better than the R320, but again, not something that would justifying replacing your old machine.

Epson’s newest printer is its best so far [Seattle Times]

Buy this printer Buy Epson Photo Stylus R340 ink cartridges

Epson announced on Monday that they expect their printer shipments to decline by about 10% over the next year. The reduction is due to their decision to eliminate some of their “low-end” non-multifunction models. These models are less profitable for Epson, so they decided to focus on the more expensive and lucrative all-in-one printers. They also plan to save money by using more of the same parts in multiple machines.

Epson is currently the number two printer manufacturer in the world, trailing HP. According to the article, they currently have about a 20% share of the market compared to HP’s 35% share. Recently Epson has been losing ground in Europe to Canon and HP, and this decision to scale back their shipments will likely cause them to slip a little in the U.S. market as well.

Focusing more on high-end models would make Epson more similar to Canon, in that Canon does not have a huge number of models on the market and few of them are cheap entry level machines. They tend to limit their supply and focus on either photo or multifunction machines. These days, you won’t really find a simple “low-end” Canon inkjet printer that doesn’t really do anything but print, but you can find a couple from Epson like the Stylus C88 or the Stylus C66. HP has always been the leader in inexpensive entry level inkjets, and with Dell now in that market as well, it probably just doesn’t make much sense for Epson to be there too. As consumers get more serious about home printing, whether for photos or for their small businesses, there will probably be fewer and fewer of this type of machine and in the end Epson will not be missing out on much.

Seiko Epson Expects Inkjet Printer Shipments to Fall [Bloomberg]

Epson has developed a print head that uses organic light-emitting diodes as the source of light. What the heck does that mean? Well if you want, you can read up on OLED over at Wikipedia, but in simple terms it is a type of technology similar to LED (light-emitting diode). Up until now, it had seen limited use in some displays like flat panel monitors or TVs. It is important because it is an improvement over the current LED technology. Epson would use it to produce smaller print heads that have brighter and more precise beams than their current laser printers feature. The article notes that it would allow them to make smaller laser printers and copiers which would be faster and print at a higher resolution.

Printers get a glimpse of OLED tech [CNET]

CNET has posted a review of the Epson Stylus CX4800 and their final verdict is not too positive. While noting that it has good features, especially for a machine in its price range, they note that the CX4800 had mediocre print quality and is one of the slowest printers they have seen in a while. Epson rated the CX4800 at 20 pages per minute (in draft mode), but based on their tests, CNET found that they only got 1.57 ppm. Other similar models in that price range which were tested by CNET printed anywhere from 5-7 ppm.

Based on the user reviews at CNET and Amazon, their disappointment with the CX4800 seems pretty valid. Some of the complaints that they had in the review didn’t seem to ring true with too many other people, like the lack of an LCD preview screen, which really nobody else seemed to mind. On a side note, we actually give Epson kudos for leaving the LCD preview screen off of a machine, since we think it is nothing more than a novelty that seems cool but has no real purpose. If people are going to view and edit their photos, they are going to do it on their computer, not on some tiny two inch screen. An LCD does help make it easier to use the menu options on the printer, but as far as its usefulness for viewing printers, we aren’t convinced.

Back to the CX4800. What most people seemed to agree on was that this isn’t a printer meant for people serious about printing photos. To be fair to Epson, this is in all-in-one machine that only costs around $100, so people really shouldn’t be expecting a machine that gives top-notch photo printing results. But based on the reviews and feedback, and the fact that most other Epson all-in-one machines have been pretty well-received, this might be a model to pass over.

On a final note, we have yet to figure out why CNET posts reviews of products six months after they are released. For instance, this printer came out in August of 2005, yet this review was first posted to their site on March 7th. Strange.

Epson Stylus CX4800 CNET editors’ review

Buy this printer Buy Epson Stylus CX4800 inkjet cartridges

In a story that is probably interesting to no one, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences used Epson printers to print the photo ID badges for everyone involved in this year’s Oscars. More specifically, they used Epson R800 printers. Now the only thing more strange than Epson putting out a press release with this information is that the Oscars used a relatively common printer to make their badges. The R800 is not some junky entry-level machine, but it is also not a machine reserved for professionals only. You can order one online for under $400, which makes it one of the more expensive machines out there, but certainly not out of everyone’s price range. But, it does have a 1.5-picoliter ink droplet. Sounds impressive, right? Ok, we know that probably no one knows what a picoliter is (it is 1 trillionth of a liter) but what is important is that 1.5 picoliters is currently the smallest drop size in the whole industry. So it does have that going for it.

It just seems a little strange to us imagining a bunch of Epson photo printers printing out badges backstage at the Oscars. Seems to us like they would have some lab where they have a huge printer that cranks out like 50 badges per second. Anyways, you can go out and buy this printer now and brag to everyone that it is the same printer model that possibly printed a badge for George Clooney…..or something.

Academy Awards(R) Presentation Uses Epson Printers [Press Release]

Amazon has the Epson Stylus Photo 1280 on sale with both a coupon code and a mail-in rebate. You can save 5% off the starting price of $379.99 by using the coupon code SAVEPSNEVENT and then you can use the $100 rebate which is mentioned on the page. After both discounts the price comes down to $261, which is not bad considering it would probably normally cost you around $400 in an office superstore.

We won’t lie to you though - this is an old printer. At one time the 1280 was one of the best photo machines you could get and was very unique because it featured a color cartridge with five colors back before really anyone was doing that. But these days every new printer that comes out features tons of colors, so this one no longer has as much of an edge over the competition as it once did. So, don’t expect any technology that is going to blow you away. At the same time, though, this is a large format printer which can print photos at up to 13×19, something that is not easy to find. Based on this sale, it seems like they might be phasing this printer out, so anyone who is interested in more than just 8×10s should consider this deal.

The 5% off coupon is good until 3/13.

Epson Stylus 1280 cartridges.