context switch

EpS.O.B.

April 4, 2006 on 5:34 pm | In Linux, rants, hardware, printer, epson | 14 Comments

Davyd is absolutely right: steer away from any new-ish Epson printer you see, no matter how cheap they throw it at you.

When I was living with my parents, I “inherited” an old StylusColor 760 - easily the best printer I’ve ever had under Linux. When I moved in with Marta, we decided to buy a combined scanner/printer CX3650 (it came cheap at ~100€). Making it work under Ubuntu wasn’t that hard: only the scanner required adding a line in /etc/sane.d/epson.conf; it actually required more work for installing it on Marta’s iBook. But unless you print at least a page every day or so, the ink solidifies on the heads and creates white stripes on the printouts. You try and clean the heads, and you get a puddle of ink on the bottom, which marks the paper.

To make a long story short: the printer is now sitting on a shelf, disconnected, and I’m really thinking about buying an HP - which would suck, because I still got a perfectly working scanner attached to a useless printer.

Unless, my dear Lazyweb, someone knows a way to clean the heads of an Epson without a) calling tech support or b) destroying the chassis. Thanks.