[Macworld.com]

Last week, Epson quietly announced updates to its Stylus Pro line of printers, with new Vivid Magenta inks, anti-clog features and more. One of the printers is an entirely new model that can print up to 64 inches wide. [more]

[ante_em]

OKay, here is just my experience with them in printing my large-scale work, not meant to be an all-encompassing opinion of Epson printers--just the 44-inchers, really: In the past I would have been VERY excited about such announcements, but having struggled with a couple of iterations of their 24- and 44-inch for several years now, I am as likely as ever to give HP a try for my next major printer purchase.The reasons:Epson printers waste a huge amount of paper as well as ink: Frequently the Epson 10000 and 9500 will blithely roll about a foot or two of paper past the print heads before starting a print, and at $800 a roll for some of the specialty papers, that's like flushing $20-30 every time you run a test print.I can't tell you how many times the alignment process (still an inexact process after all these years by which the user has to try to line up the paper's edge to a series of little rivets along the front edge--an absurd, even negligent design) has consumed a half an hour or more as the machine goes through some klunky internal alignment check, rolling the paper back and forth repeatedly only to result in an error message.The printer driver's interface is convoluted and user-hostile, with highly important functions buried deep in modal sub-menus. Color management (well, i should say TURNING OFF and KEEPING OFF printer's color management), custom paper handling, arcane and poorly documented naming and interface conventions (I could go on) have made every single large print job a 6-aspirin moment. Color, while gorgeous when you get it right, is typically all over the place and setting up color profiles for EACH AND EVERY PAPER STOCK YOU USE is as obligatory as it is time-consuming and materials-intensive.The smaller printers like the 4800 are significantly easier to work with, though the paper handling is still klunky and frequently the rollers fail to properly grab some stocks. Paper alignment is still inconsistently tricky and time consuming.SO: if they can finally pay attention to issues like that, really fully utilize the barcode-on-paper feature, and update their software a bit, I'd consider them, but from what I'm seeing of HP, any artist would be doing himself a massive disservice by not checking into the comptetition.

[Rick LePage]

I absolutely agree that HP’s wide-format printers are pretty damn good, and some of the extras that HP is offering—especially the built-in calibration and the great driver that lets you add custom paper types on the fly—really do differentiate them from Epson. I can recommend both the Z2100 and Z3100 wholeheartedly.

I haven’t had the paper problems you’ve described with my 7600 or 4000/4800, but I have seen similar complaints from some folks. Epson also needs to improve their driver: both HP and Canon are doing a good job at offering improved drivers and Photoshop plug-ins. I know they’re working on some stuff, and I’d like to see the Leopard printing support, but Epson still is the gold standard for image quality.

[charlieartist]

Thanks--Isn't there also a heated debate upon the inks themselves that HP uses, vis-a-vis to Epson? My Stylus Photo does pretty good, but I'm looking to get a new color proofer...