Purchased an Epson Stylus C84 printer a while back. On the up side, it works with XP and OS X. On the down side, it came with no USB cable. On the really down side, it sucks ink like crazy.
And in the this-printer-totally-sucks category, the ink clogs and there’s relatively little you can do about it, causing the printer to become a paperweight after about 9 months.
Which I had checked Google first, because this is a common problem.
Only one link provided any hope. Even then it wasn’t trivial.
What I did get out of my Google searching was a good laugh. Some do-it-yourselfer-dumbass went to clean his ink tube, and lacking the correct cleaning solution to pour in the tube, decided to try a can of compressed air instead. He makes a passing note that “you will get ink all over yourself.” Just the visual of when he pulled the trigger, coating his face in permanent black speckles, made me laugh so hard my sides hurt.
Walt gives the Epson Style C84 a thumbs down.
I hate mine! It was the first brand new printer I ever treated myself to and it is a total ink hog, the heads always need cleaning which sucks the (black especially) ink right out of the darn thing which is majorly costly. You pretty much need individual ink IV drips hanging above it putting the ink in as fast as its being used (wasted). Seems everytime it will FINALLY print a decent page (and only one or so) then the ink runs out and it sits for a day or more and then you finally get MORE new ink and install it and then start all over wasting ink as the heads are sticky, need cleaning, vertical/horizontal alignment is off, etc. I find my goal (and it is not easily attainable) is always to at least get whatever it is I needed printing printed before the ink runs out from all the fix-it chores prior to use.
The thing also takes forever just to feed a piece of paper into it sometimes. gosh, it just makes noise and the printer head thing goes back and forth and back and forth and I end up giving in and leaning over to manually make sure the paper is pushed all the way in (it always is and I try not to fall for this, but you know).
The amount of anger and frustration I have to undergo every time I try to use that thing in itself should be enough for me to just toss it straight under a speeding locomotive. What a waste of money; might has well just burned my money, it would have been less painful and much quicker.
I responded to an ad on Craig’s List last week for somebody offering a whole set of ink refills for an Epson Stylus C84. I thought that was terrific, wow! What a savings! Turns out the woman was giving a set of ink cartridges away because she had just bought new ones (even tho she had some in the printer) thinking it would fix her printer problem. Her printer would not print the color “black” period. She was so frustrated that when I picked up the ink she handed me the whole darn printer! Now I have two useless printers. Mine printer stopped printing black too recently and instead will print a olive green/grey mixture if I put the setting as high quality color which is what I always had to do anyway to even print a letter as it would come out boggled. I like to consider myself pretty computer savy but I could not for the life of me figure out what was wrong with hers when I got it home. It is tucked in the back of a closet already so I don’t see it out of the corner of my eye or something and remember the frustration trying to fix it before the ink ran out (ink ran out).
I will never buy another Epson Stylus product and perhaps not even an Epson brand printer again.
Thank you for letting me vent. Feel free to email me back to vent about your piece of useless plastic if you feel the need at ljsohlstrom@msn.com.
~ Inkless in Oregon