gervaise
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
 p.1 #1 · Epson 4000 Report - First Impressions | |
Following up my request that others comment on the 4000 when they got it, here are some initial impressions of my copy of the machine that arrived today around Noon Pacific Time. I apologize that more of the comments don't deal with quality of the prints from it, but as you will learn below, there were some problems installing it on my PC running Win XP Pro, that have still not been resolved. I will supplement this when they are.
Overall, I am impressed with how solid it is, and how relatively quiet it runs even when printing. However, even on a solid table, it shakes the floor of my home office slightly, which has two other tables adjoining it. I am going to have to isolate them to stop the vibration while it is printing. It also lives up to its claimed speed, in that my first A3 size (12 x 15 image) only took about 3 minutes to print out. It seems like the 8 x 10s I did took longer for some reason, but they had to smaller images on them. All the stuff I have printed to now is on semi-gloss or luster. Will try Enhanced Matte and Ultrasmooth next, but I wanted to do the first tests with cut paper so as not to waste the big papers.
It is a monster of a machine when you get it set on a table. I knew it was 33 inches wide, but forgot that it is almost 18 inches tall, and from front to back needs at least 34-36 inches of clearance with the built in roll paper holder in back and the huge cut paper holder in front into which you can load up to 250 pieces of ordinary paper and at least 50 sheets of typical printer paper.
The UPS guy nearly went bananas over the size of the box it comes in, which actually weighs 137 pounds because it has wooden blocks under it and gobs of packing materials which you are supposed to save for reshipment in case of needed repairs. Where you would put it, I dont know unless you have an extra garage. I am sure you could drop the box from 20 feet and the printer would survive, the way it is packed. Yet it opens easily once you figure out how to undo the strange little white clips that hold the sides on it.
There are actually only a few items in the box that are not on the machine - the roll paper parts, the front paper bin, the power cord and some little plastic things, and the various manuals and two CDs - one a movie on how to set the printing functions for better prints, and the drivers and utilities (More of that later!). You will need two strong guys to pull it out of the box and carry it to where you are putting it and for heavens sake, get a strong table as the thing weighs about 85 pounds without any paper or ink carts in it, and likely over a 100 when filled with this stuff.
Installation of the hardware was fairly simple, once you removed the six thousand pieces of blue tape stuck everywhere, and pulled out a couple of blue plastic things that lock the parts together. From box opening to having it running and pumping the ink into the lines took perhaps an hour to an hour and half, assuming you read the quick install brochure and dont spend all your time admiring the machine you just paid $1,800 for. It also comes with several manuals and one longer reference manual on the CD that you install on the computer.
The eight 110ml cartridges snap into place on either side with fairly quick fit and I gather they are color keyed since they slipped in very nicely, and are also color coded. There is a leve on the right side of each that has to be pushed up and down a number of times while it is pumping ink into the lines, and this process took perhaps 10 minutes. It took longer to open all the cartridge packs and cut the plastic and shake the carts, than it did to get the ink installed.
One scary thing is the comment in the instructions, to the effect that the carts they give you are "intended to prime the ink lines," and that this takes up to 50% of the ink in them (at $69 each list!!) and that you may find they will run out of ink fairly soon, so be sure to have a set of back up cartridges available. Damn, I paid $1,800 and the ink will run out and I have to pay another $500 for more shortly after I install it  Yikes, I hope not. My wife would kill me if she knew what the printer cost, let alone buying more ink right away.
From here, you load either the roll or cut sheet paper, and then start installing the software. That is another story.  I had noticed on the Epson website that there were already some apparently revised drivers and other software, and a firmware upgrade and a utility needed to install the revised firmware. So I had already downloaded them for use. But in installing the CD and reading the instructions (I am one of those fussy people who read manuals FIRST, I noticed it said very clearly install the software that comes with the machine first, then later install the revisions that you may find on the Epson website. SO I DID it that way, contrary to my inclinations.
Surprisingly the machine worked immediately in the sense that I was able at once to print a test page and when I went into PS CS, I found a whole long list of profiles for virtually all the Epson papers for this machine, EXCEPT Ultrasmooth. I proceeded to print my first print (on the wrong side of the paper, of course, since I forgot that the paper has to be loaded face DOWN in the tray) and on the second try I got a nice little 8 x 10 snap shot sample I was using for a test.
Then I tried to see why the ink monitor was not coming up like my 2200 did while printing and I also tried to use the Utility software to check what version the drivers were and what version of the firmware I had, to see if I needed to re-install everything with the updated version - like the little yellow paper said to do. SURPRISE, the ink monitor would not come up and the utility software said it could not communicate with the printer -- HOW COME, it prints from the computer? What is going on here??
The solution to that mystery awaits section 2 of this report, and the final solution hopefully will come tomorrow when I call Epson for the third time and tell them that of everything they told me to do, three different sets of ideas, NONE worked. I will stop now to see if anyone cares about this initial report. More later.
-Gerry
|
