This is my printer and I purchased in September of 1997 and it is still
going strong. Although I paid $299 when I bought it they are even
a better value now. You can't even find a 600 now. The current
printer is a 640 and it is usually $139. The best replacement now
is a 740 model and usually costs $179. The 740 offers a USB (Universal
Serial Bus) connection that offers faster printing than parallel port.
I bought the Stylus 600 because I was so impressed by the printing results
produced by one owned by my brother. With printing at 1440 dpi on Kodak's
photo paper a scanned and reprinted photo is barely detectable from the
original. It must be seen to be believed. I have a lot of people that have
been asking me to duplicate and enlarge photos and have been paying. Epson
has one other feature that no other printer has, MicroWeave. MicroWeave
is a print method that prints each pass of the printhead in fine lines
instead of whole printhead widths and overlaps each pass of these fine
lines so that printhead passes are undetectable. Most printers will print
each pass in about 1/4" passes and advances the paper by that amount producing
a line where the passes overlap and where you can detect each pass of the
printhead. This is called banding. This printer will do this if you want
high speed printing and disable MicroWeave. With MicroWeave enabled this
printer advances the paper about 1/16" on each pass to eliminate banding.
I challenge anyone to come up with a printer that produces these results
at less that $600. This printer cost me $299. I have seen the results of
a $5000 color laser printer and although it did print about 10 pages per
minute the output was no where near photo quality. I replaced an Epson
Stylus II with this one that already had MicroWeave and printed at 720
dpi. The only features that I gained by purchasing this printer was having
black and color cartridges onboard at the same time and 1440 dpi printing.
These features were enough for me to purchase the new printer. When ever
I show a photo to someone that owns an ink jet printer, they immediately
want to sell their current printer. I have a problem with this, if you
sell your old printer to anyone else, their money would have been much
better invested in this printer, no matter how much they give you for your
printer. I have sold my Epson Stylus II for $80. For that they get MicroWeave
and 720 dpi printing. Most printers are Canon and without MicroWeave and
720 dpi printing, I feel that they are worth about $30 even though most
cost $400 to $600 originally.
With printing at 1440 dpi and MicroWeave I have a hard time understanding why anyone would want any other printer. A lot of people believe that Canon or Hewlett Packard are the best printers to buy but I believe that these overpriced and under featured printers. I believe the success of Canon is because of heavy advertising. If Epson advertised as much as Canon does, they would not be able to keep these printers in stock. Again, if I did not believe that this printer was not so overwhelmingly superior, I would not have taken the time to create this page. I created this page because I would like everyone to have these incredible features without wasting money on another printer first. I have nothing to gain by telling you about this printer other than lots of thanks. I can find only one advantage to HP and Canon printers. Ink cartridge refillability. Some Canon printers allow you to refill each color as they run out and HP printers allow you to refill cartridges with a kit instead of buying a new cartridge, you only have to buy ink. Epson's cartridges are expensive, $29.99 for color and $24.99 for black. That is the price at CompUSA. I have found cartridges for all printers cheaper at Sam's Wholesale. I have recently used a cartridge refill kit for my printer from Repleninx that cost me $25 but usually sells for $32.99. I got it cheaper as part of a promotion on an auction site. This kit will refill the black cartridge over 6 times and the color cartridge 12 times. I have calculated that is a savings of over $550 buying regular cartridges. The savings is more than the cost of the printer so I am willing to take a chance. I still have some of the ink left from the refill kit but I found it to be messy. More recently I have purchase aftermarket (non-Epson brand) cartridges at a significant savings without the mess. Here are links to inexpensive aftermarket black and color cartridges. These links are for the 600 but you can see the cross match and you can replace the 600 with your Epson printers model number. Without these advantages over the Epson Stylus 600 the other printers do not compare. There is in my opinion no other printer to buy.
Here are some other helpful links:
Epson Stylus 600 drivers and troubleshooting
Copyright ©1998,1999,2000 Contents and layout of this page are copyrighted by Todd S. Gilly