Sadly Has Had Its Day (Epson Stylus Color 440)

Member Name: ceminem

Product:	Epson Stylus Color 440
Date:	14/10/01 (208 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap

Disadvantages: Slow, Outdated

My trustworthy Epson 440 inkjet printer has always served me well, however now that even the newest printers of superior quality from Epson are under £100 I will soon sucomb to them and say goodbye to my loyal friend. Oh you try so hard to impress me but sorry your top dots per inch of 770 just doesn't cut it anymore, I need a printer with 2880 dots per inch to really show the flashiness of my graphics and documents.

Epson have always produced top quality printers and scanners as well as other computer perperials. I purchased this printer about 2 or 3 years ago when it was still relatively new. If my memory serves me correct then it was approximately £80 back then, hood value I thought and when I tested it I knew I had made the right choice.

Setting it up was very easy, just a case of plugging the printer cable (sold separately) into the back of both the pc and printer, and then plugging in the power cable into the mains. Then switch on your computer and install the provided software, don't worry if your worried about not being able to do this as there are on screen step by step instructions guiding you through the whole process.

Installing the printer software will allow the pc to commincate with the printer, enabling you to print out your documents. The software also allows you to use a few functions as well such as seeing how much ink is left in the ink cartridges. When ink is running low then the corresponding light (either colour or black) will flash to warn you to buy a cartridge so that you can install it as soon as it runs out. When the cartridge has totally ran out then the light just stays on without flashing. Other features are the ability to clean the print heads to fix any printing problems, beware though as this seriously decreases your ink rapidly.

The bad thing is that althought the cartridges last quite long they are very expensive to replace. Genuine Epson cartridges are about £25 for the colour and £
20 for the black. Non Epson compatibles are much cheaper but are not recommended by Epson, I see no difference in print quality though.

After years of printing my Epson 440 still churns out documents without fail although I'm concerned with the feint horizontal lines that sometimes runs through my work. The printer is a bit slow when printing with the best quality turned on but granted you do get the best quality this way.

The Epson 440 is a good budget starter printer, however there are many better and updated printers on the market for a similar price.

Summary: