all photo printers

As a graphic designer, I'm ALWAYS skeptical of anything that claims to be able to do "everything"...

Initially, I was in the market for a new scanner - I thumbed through some recent issues of MacWorld to try and find something decent and reasonably priced. I then stumbled upon a review for the RX500, because I also wanted to replace my clunky HP Deskjet- which was no good at printing photos, and it couldn't even do text that well either! Why was I keeping this thing?!

I went to CompUSA with the RX500 in mind, and there happened to be an EPSON rep. there, coincidentally in the process of selling an RX600 to someone else. Well, this person was ranting and raving over how great this printer was, and my wife and I just happened to overhear it. You married guys know how important it is to have the wife's blessing, don't you? Well, a couple of photo demonstrations and some copy tests, and we were walking out the door with an RX600 of our own!

I only gave it four stars, because I'm just way too critical of any photos & color prints that don't turn out perfect. But that's my profession, not a reflection on the product. I should have my wife write the review, because she's absolutely *thrilled* with the prospects of scanning & printing old negatives & slides, and printing directly from the camera's memory stick- no need for the nitpicky husband and his crazy Photoshop...

There are hundreds of products I could (or should) have reviewed. Some good, some bad. This is the first one I have ever felt strongly enough to comment on.

Being in the IT field I have always been skeptical of "all in one devices". However, after doing some research this is typical of those devices

Pros:
(1) It's photocopier - plain and simple. With or without the PC. Color, BW, enlarge, reduce, zoom - all the features of regular coper.
(2) Digital camera support - memory card or USB cable. Images can be viewed and printed directly - again, without a PC
(3) Ease of setup. Very easy to follow directions. Step by step. It works as advertised with no installation hassles (WinXP)
(4) Scanner & a printer. Attach to the PC via USB - scan to image, scan to application. Very easy to use, and again, it does everything it says it should do

Cons:
Honestly I can't offer any. Maybe the price, but even then you're getting a set of multi-funcitonal devices all in one. How much would a printer, a scanner, and a color copier cost separately. How much space and cabling hassle would there be?

This unit can do it all (except fax). The software is a dream compared to the HP2150 I returned in order to get this. I got the HP because it had built in wireless/ethernet print server and a fax. But the software bundle is all or nothing, they didn't separate out the printer driver...so anyone who wants to just print on the thing must first install 1.5gb (thats GIGabytes) of crap the infects your registry like a cancer. This Epson RX600's software is a dream. They separated everything! Just want to print occasional black and white like me, driver is just 8mb. Want everything and do photo touchups and crazy things and photo albums and scan (like my wife) - just put in the cd and add what you want one app at a time. That's why we went with this printer and returned the HP. Also, one more plus is that the RX600 scans old negatives and can print them perfectly or digitize them for you forever - the HP can't. I LOVE this feature (and yes, it's a combo of mechanical and software differences that achieve this, I dare you to try on another machine). I do miss the HP's built in print server. I bought a Linksys Wireless-G for USB2.0, and it won't work with this printer. Epson wrote me back and confirmed this. This is why I docked this review by a star. You MUST be able to run your printers from a print server. My 4 year old HPLaserJet3150 hooked up no problem, but my new Epson fails? That sucks, and if my wife didn't love this so much, I would send it back strictly for that reason. I do like how it's USB 2.0, it is fast. Separate color tanks (...)are sweet, not like HP where if blue runs out, you're forced to buy all other colors again. This has 6 color tanks all independently replaceable. Nice.
PROS: USB2.0, individual color tanks, scan negatives,LCD screen, front loading usb input for cameras, built in card reader on the front,great b/w quality, killer photo print quality, minimal/incremental/customizable software/driver install (extremely flexible and lightweight)
CONS: doesn't work w/ LinkSys print servers