Peter Figen Offline Upload & Sell: On
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From what I hear, it's going to be at least another two years before Epson replaces the current models, which leaves the 79XX series six and a half years old now. They've been busy applying the current head technology across as many applications as they can to milk it for as much as they can. Not a bad thing for a company to do, I guess. I still think the Epsons are the best out there but they absolutely are prone to clogging, and not Appalachia style. I replaced the heads on my 9900 at five years and it ran about $1800. It's the same head and same labor for a 7900, which is probably not worth it on the smaller model, but if my 9900 lasts another five or six years, I'll be happy. To be honest, I don't think Epson gives two craps about small users like us. They are only concerned with larger facilities that pump through huge amounts of ink and paper - where they really make the money.
If I were in the place of the original poster, I would take a representative sample of image - at least half a dozen or so, and have them output on both Epson and Canon and see if you can tell the difference on the types of images, you make. Even if you have to pay a couple hundred dollars for test prints, it will be money well spent and you'll feel much better about your eventual decision.
With Epsons, it seems that keeping the Relative Humidity between 40 and 60 percent in your printer room, running test prints and nozzle checks every few days and changing out the rubber wiper assembly once a year, are all very good preventative measures. In fact, recently, I was having some clogging issues with mine that didn't seem to respond to cleaning how you'd expect. It had been a little over a year since the new heads. I had ordered three extra wiper assemblies at the time of the repair - so I replaced that little $15 part and now the clogging is completely gone.
There is of course, Erik's huge thread about his experiences with the 7900 over at Luminous-Landscape, but that might be light looking at youtube videos of your upcoming type of surgery - sorta not recommended, but good to know it's there.
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