Well, I hate to run three printer reviews in a row, but the other day I got my hands on something in which I think a fair number of people are interested.
Epson's Stylus Color Photo, which costs $2,700, was a 'star' in the manufacturer's line. With six-colour printing, the machine, as the name implies, was designed to make dazzling pictures. But at 720 dpi, half the resolution of the other printers in Epson's line, there was some confusion about which would be the best buy. Epson has cleared the air with the new Photo 700, six colours and 1440 x 720 dpi.
I had one immediate beef with this printer: the ink cartridges. They have a small piece of plastic film which must be ripped off before the printer is used. That is the case with most ink cartridges, but with the 700, you only rip off half the plastic. Instructions explaining this were in tiny print. More importantly, the cartridges are small. It seems to be an industry trend to keep consumable revenues flowing by making smaller ink cartridges. Although the smaller cartridges are cheaper, my suspicion is aroused.
The driver basically is the same as the other machines in the Epson line, with extensive options, the ability to create custom settings and extensive Colorsync support on the Mac.
The one annoying point I found in the driver concerned the paper settings. Several times I changed all of the custom functions - resolution, colour matching, half-tone method etc - only to find that I had not set the paper type correctly. Changing the paper type caused all the other settings to return to their default positions.
Luckily the driver allows you to save suites of settings under a custom menu, so that once you manage to blunder through getting everything as you want it, you can save the settings.