Digital BW, The Print

Hello Richard,

>I've been wondering how the newer Epsons such as the 2400 or the 2880 
>compare with the old ones like the 2100 for reliability.

My own experience favors the newer.  I had a 2200 for almost exactly
two years.  One month from the expiration of the 2-year replacement
warranty the paper feed mechanism began serious and noisy
malfunctioning.  It clearly had worn out.  I swapped it for a 2400 in
August, 2005, so I'm now approaching three years with it.  My
experience with it has been fantastic.

Besides being a dream to use (ABW) and producing beautiful prints with
it's three K inks, it has never had a banding problem, has never
needed a head alignment, and has had only a few relatively minor
clogs, always after being idle for long periods (2-3 weeks).  My only
real complaint is sometimes it gets persnickity in feeding paper and
tries my patience.  But not always, it comes and goes...maybe it's the
phase of the moon.  

I've also found the ABW settings to be somewhat of a moving target. 
The tone often shifts a bit along the green/magenta scale when a new
cart is installed - differences in ink batches I suppose.  It's more
of an annoyance than a handicap and I've learned to live with it.  A
couple of small test prints tell me how much to adjust the horizontal
value and I'm back in business.   

Anyway, it has by far been the best printer I've ever had (four in a
6 year period).  All of it's use has been with the Epson inks.  It
has made countless prints, most of them letter size or smaller, and my
ink costs have averaged about $20/month.  I sell prints, so it has
more than paid it's way. 

Before the 2400, printing was mostly a frustrating struggle.  With the
2400 it's been pretty much printing Nirvana.

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm
I-Trak 2.1   http://www.cjcom.net/itrak.htm