Will someone come up with a witty title!? (Epson Stylus C40)

Member Name: GR-Design

Product:	Epson Stylus C40
Date:	05/09/02 (665 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheap, reliable

Disadvantages: noisy

I’ve never been a fan of Epsons myself. I’ve always much preferred Hewlett Packards, simply because of their reliability, but it was when looking out of a printer for a friend of mine, who really doesn’t know that much about computers that I came across the Epson Stylus C40.

All the friend wanted was a printer that was colour, held two cartridges (colour and black) and was cheap…oh and of course, a printer that printed! The Epson simply looked at me on Amazon and cried out to be bought, because it had all that and was under £50!

Taking delivery of the box, I was really concerned about how small the box was, but that was due to good packaging, from both Amazon and Epson themselves. The printer is packed up in a neat little box, and unlike many other products, doesn’t have extra packaging where it’s not needed.

Inside the box, you will find your printer, your drivers, your cartridges and the accessories, such as the paper feeder and power cable. I must stress here that the printer is USB or Parallel ONLY, so you have to pick up the right printer to go with your computer or cables. I must also stress that you do not get a printer cable with the printer, so this has to be purchased separate (about £5 for a parallel and £7 for a USB). I would recommend that you go for the USB printer if your computer has a free USB port, otherwise your just holding onto history.

Setting the printer up was easy peasy, but it would be for me, I have been working with computers for over 4 years now. So from a novices point of view, or a computer phobic, all you do is follow the very easy instructions and your printer is setup. In reality, all it involves is ripping a few pieces of selotape off the printer, opening and installing the ink cartridges and clipping on the paper feeder. Nothing more to it. Oh, and you have to connect the printer up to the computer via the cable and plug the power cord in. For gods sake, re
member to turn on the power at the wall aswell! I don’t know how many times I have been called to different places to resolve a new printer problem and the person has either not turned the power on, or turned the power on, but not plugged the cord into where it’s supposed to be! So save yourself some embarrassment!

Once that’s all done, your ready to install the printer software onto your computer. This is easier done with USB and a new version of windows, as your computer will instantly pick up that there is a new printer connected to the computer, then you just insert your disk and follow the on screen instructions.

However, for those of you who have older versions of windows, it’s very simple. Once it’s connected, you simply insert the CD and it will auto run, once it’s done that, you just click on the ‘install drivers/printer software’ button and the computer will do the rest for you, just asking for your interaction in the form of clicking on the ‘next’ button. It’s just as easy as installing a piece of software on your computer, afterall, that’s what it is.

Now your ready to go! Test your printer out, load it with paper and print until your hearts content, remembering that the more you print, the more ink your using, so be careful unless you have a huge ink budget!

The printer itself looks quite good, and very up to date. It’s made of white plastic, with a darker, slightly transparent lift up lid, which allows you access to the ink cartridges. It has two buttons, a power on button and also a configuration button, which does various things depending on the amount of time you depress it for. These buttons are also see through and light up in orange and green when used. However, the buttons are big and make the printer look pretty cheap in my opinion. The one good thing about the buttons is that you have a very useful ‘cancel print’ func
tion!

When you first turn it on, don’t be alarmed at the amount of noise it makes! It seems to be tradition for Epson to make printers which break the sound barrier! First it charges it’s ink, which takes about a minute of constant noises, then when it does print, it is quite loud, nothing like the sound of a recent HP Deskjet printer. So do beware, if you don’t like noisy printers, this isn’t the one for you!

Print quality is as good as you can expect from a printer that cost under £50. Considering its got a 1440DPI (Dots Per Inch) resolution, it really is quite good, however that is on the best print quality. As long as you keep using branded ink cartridges, and I’m not talking about Epson cartridges, any brand that fits the printer will do, your results should stay just as perfect. If however you refill your cartridges, don’t expect your print to be all that good! It’s never going to win Photo Printer of the year, but that’s not what it’s designed to do, this printer is designed for home use and nothing more, or low office usage. It’s great for the homework or the odd few letters you print from your PC.

Specifications:

- Maximum of 1440 x 720 DPI resolution
- 4 Colour Printing
- Up to 8ppm black and 3.9 colour, using ‘draft mode’, I should think about 5ppm using the normal mode.

The printer is available in C40UX and C40SX types. UX = USB, SX = Parallel

Original Epson cartridges will cost you around £10 for black and £13 for colour, however, you can pick up other branded cartridges for around £2 for black and £3 for colour, so you really can’t go wrong! This printer isn’t going to cost you a fortune in ink!

Overall:

Overall, this is a good printer, I would recommend it for those of you who have a PC, and print stuff off occasionally. It’s no printer for huge printing jobs, it’s not a printe
r for printing out photographs, it’s a printer for printing documents with colour, graphics and photos, however photo’s will not be of the same quality as proper photo printers, which you can pick up for around £150.

You can pick it up from Amazon for £49.99 and at that price, I would seriously think about getting one, even though I’m not a lover of Epson printers!

Summary: