Epson R200 Stylus photo

[snafu1]

I have one of these printers, and the frustrating thing is the ink. I
need to buy all the cartridges, but only bought the black so far. It
won't let me print in just black? it HAS to have all the inks to
print? Too bad there wasn't such a mod where someone could fix this.
This printer isn't very ink friendly. I didn't print that many pages
at all before the inks ran out. As a contrast, i have an old HP
Deskjet 890c printer that i've literally printed at least 200 pages
without any sign of the inks going out of the current cartridges i have
in it. I bought the ink july 2005, and here it is a year and a month
later, and i'm still printing pages left and right!

 

[Fenrir Enterprises]

I have one of these printers, and the frustrating thing is the ink. I
need to buy all the cartridges, but only bought the black so far. It
won't let me print in just black? it HAS to have all the inks to
print? Too bad there wasn't such a mod where someone could fix this.
This printer isn't very ink friendly. I didn't print that many pages
at all before the inks ran out. As a contrast, i have an old HP
Deskjet 890c printer that i've literally printed at least 200 pages
without any sign of the inks going out of the current cartridges i have
in it. I bought the ink july 2005, and here it is a year and a month
later, and i'm still printing pages left and right!

The printhead will be ruined if you don't have ink in all of the
slots. It uses color ink to keep the printhead running even if you
don't print in color, just to prevent the printer from clogging up. If
you tried to run it without ink you would destroy the printhead. The
R200 is more of a photo printer than a general purpose printer, the HP
is probably better for 'everyday' printing.

If you think this printer wastes a lot of ink, don't ever get a C
series printer. I don't know how you could possibly afford to run one
of these without refills, the C88+ I bought uses 1/8 of the ink just
for a regular cleaning cycle. The C88 I had before that used even
/more/ ink, I think they actually toned it down a little with the +
version.

--

http://www.FenrirOnline.com

Computer services, custom metal etching,
arts, crafts, and much more.

 

[ian]

I have one of these printers, and the frustrating thing is the ink. I
need to buy all the cartridges, but only bought the black so far. It
won't let me print in just black? it HAS to have all the inks to
print? Too bad there wasn't such a mod where someone could fix this.
This printer isn't very ink friendly. I didn't print that many pages
at all before the inks ran out. As a contrast, i have an old HP
Deskjet 890c printer that i've literally printed at least 200 pages
without any sign of the inks going out of the current cartridges i have
in it. I bought the ink july 2005, and here it is a year and a month
later, and i'm still printing pages left and right!

To avoid unnecessary cleaning cycles i leave my epson printer switched on
permanently. You can also buy the cheapest inks you can for everyday use
and fit the genuine stuff when you want to print photos. perhaps better
still is if you don't plan to print colour is to buy a set of cleaning carts
and leave those in instead.

All inkjets today need a full set of carts or will refuse to print. It is
to prevent burning out the print head. As hp printers replace the heads
with every cartridge change i should think there are fewer head cleaning
cycles.

 

[Jan Alter]

I have one of these printers, and the frustrating thing is the ink. I
need to buy all the cartridges, but only bought the black so far. It
won't let me print in just black? it HAS to have all the inks to
print? Too bad there wasn't such a mod where someone could fix this.
This printer isn't very ink friendly. I didn't print that many pages
at all before the inks ran out. As a contrast, i have an old HP
Deskjet 890c printer that i've literally printed at least 200 pages
without any sign of the inks going out of the current cartridges i have
in it. I bought the ink july 2005, and here it is a year and a month
later, and i'm still printing pages left and right!

If I knew just how much printing you'd be doing with this printer it would
be easier to make a recommendation how to cut your ink costs. I've found for
the C84 printers at my school that it is unquestionably cheaper and easy to
refill spongeless cartridges. They are simply nothing like filling the
traditional sponged cartridges and and cut ink costs to a fourth or less of
what OEM ink would run. One can refill one of these cartridges in less than
a minute. Besides that they're environmentally friendly.
I would offer you to take a look at the website below. For less than $60 a
set of spongeless cartridges with auto-resetting chips can be had with 4 oz
bottles of ink for the C88. The C88 uses pigment ink, however you can also
use dye-base ink (which they carry as well), and there would have less
propensity to clog the head, though you would have to experiment with
different papers to get refined printing profiles for the machine.

http://www.alotofthings.com/viartshop/

 

[Fenrir Enterprises]

The C88 uses pigment ink, however you can also
use dye-base ink (which they carry as well), and there would have less
propensity to clog the head, though you would have to experiment with
different papers to get refined printing profiles for the machine.

How bright are the colors with the dyebased ink? I have pigment ink
refills for it right now and am rather disappointed with the cyan
being close to RGB blue rather than the light cyan that every other
printer I've used had (printing a gradient from RGB blue to RGB cyan
shows zero difference in the band). It's not MIS ink, but I saw a
similiar complaint in their forums, the reply being that the darker
blue is somehow better for photos. Since it's a text-only printer, it
doesn't matter much to me, but I've been thinking about switching to
photo cyan pigment ink or dyebased inks. I'm not using it for photos,
but for text and business graphics, such as logos.

--

http://www.FenrirOnline.com

Computer services, custom metal etching,
arts, crafts, and much more.

 

[measekite]

you will not be disappointed with Epson ink.

How bright are the colors with the dyebased ink? I have pigment ink
refills for it right now and am rather disappointed with the cyan
being close to RGB blue rather than the light cyan that every other
printer I've used had (printing a gradient from RGB blue to RGB cyan
shows zero difference in the band). It's not MIS ink, but I saw a
similiar complaint in their forums, the reply being that the darker
blue is somehow better for photos. Since it's a text-only printer, it
doesn't matter much to me, but I've been thinking about switching to
photo cyan pigment ink or dyebased inks. I'm not using it for photos,
but for text and business graphics, such as logos.

--

http://www.FenrirOnline.com

Computer services, custom metal etching,
arts, crafts, and much more.

 

[Jan Alter]

How bright are the colors with the dyebased ink? I have pigment ink
refills for it right now and am rather disappointed with the cyan
being close to RGB blue rather than the light cyan that every other
printer I've used had (printing a gradient from RGB blue to RGB cyan
shows zero difference in the band). It's not MIS ink, but I saw a
similiar complaint in their forums, the reply being that the darker
blue is somehow better for photos. Since it's a text-only printer, it
doesn't matter much to me, but I've been thinking about switching to
photo cyan pigment ink or dyebased inks. I'm not using it for photos,
but for text and business graphics, such as logos.

--

http://www.FenrirOnline.com

Computer services, custom metal etching,
arts, crafts, and much more.

I've unfortunately not done enough printing to give you a good comparison
between the inks with the same pictures. If anything the dye base ink would
probably be brighter than the pigment variety from what I've seen in
comparisons between pigment and dye. The difficulties arise for the C88 in
that the software is written for pigment ink and so one has to make custom
ICC profiles themselves through a bit of experimentation to see what will
work well. Once they're made though it all works.
I've done that somewhat for the C84 printers I've got at school and the
results are nicely satisfying for general classroom photos. What's more
important is that I've shifted from using the Durabrite pigment poison,
which clogs these machines to death, to dye base ink from MSI and keeps them
running and out of the landfill.

 

[Gordon B. Alley]

If I knew just how much printing you'd be doing with this printer it would
be easier to make a recommendation how to cut your ink costs. I've found for
the C84 printers at my school that it is unquestionably cheaper and easy to
refill spongeless cartridges. They are simply nothing like filling the
traditional sponged cartridges and and cut ink costs to a fourth or less of
what OEM ink would run. One can refill one of these cartridges in less than
a minute. Besides that they're environmentally friendly.
I would offer you to take a look at the website below. For less than $60 a
set of spongeless cartridges with auto-resetting chips can be had with 4 oz
bottles of ink for the C88. The C88 uses pigment ink, however you can also
use dye-base ink (which they carry as well), and there would have less
propensity to clog the head, though you would have to experiment with
different papers to get refined printing profiles for the machine.

http://www.alotofthings.com/viartshop/

I buy complete 6-cartridge sets of genuine Epson ink for my R200 at
Costco for about $56.