Epson Stylus Photo 925 Printer

When printing the glossy quality photos, it consumes lots of ink, so you might want to keep some back up cartridges, since they will drain out pretty quickly. Look for those generic ink cartridges for this model. They work well and save you money.

If you're looking for a printer that prints great quality picture and capable of doing the regular printing, this printer is for you. But if you're looking to print a regular color picture or just for printing documents, I suggest a cheaper printer.

The problem is: you just don't know when it's NOT going to look great. You *must* baby-sit the printer, and about half way through each print (when you can actually see a portion of the image) decide if the printer is function correctly.

To get two transfers (at a each, just for the paper) we've had to print four times... wasting paper. 1st try: good. 2nd: oops - clean the heads (uses ink). 3rd: oops, clean the head. 4th: great! Tah-dah!

Post cards: same thing. Several great Xmas cards in a row, then wham! Bad one. Clean the heads. Several good, and another bad.

If you like babysitting, don't mind wasting money every now and then, enjoy listening to the printer cleaning the heads and printing test sheets, this printer is for you!

Love the instructions that come with Epson's transfer paper, too. "Place the printable side up," it says. Uh, could you be a little less specific? There's two sides, and this is my first time using the paper. Is that the smooth side, or the rough side?

"Choose 'Flip Image' in the driver." Uh, AIN'T no flippin' "Flip Image" option anywhere I can find!

On the plus-side: the printer has a small footprint so it doesn't take a lot of room on your desk. Ink cartridges are easy to replace.

On the negative side: any paper thicker than your normal printer paper requires you be present to hand-feed each sheet. Post cards, business cards, etc will feed multiple sheets and jam the printer. Another "Engineering" marvel.

Yeah, but when it works... nice pictures are assured! When I win the lottery, I'll try a different brand, and let you know how they compare.

First, it is a printer attached to and used by your computer. There are a huge number of options once you hit the print button. So many, in fact, that it is easy to mess up the quality and/or colors in your print. But if you are patient, the results from this printer are amazing. Using premium glossy photo paper, I am amazed at how much the vibrant images seem to leap from the print. Really a stark contrast to the dull flat images of yesterday's inkjets. Print speed is okay, nothing wonderful. And, of course, don't use this printer to do regular docs. The quality is fine, but you're better off with one of the cheap (but fast and high quality) lasers out there, many about 100 clams.

Second, this is an independent digital camera printer. It has built in slots for compactflash, memory stick, and mmc. This is a great contrast to those printers with just a pc card reader (then yoiu have to purchase the appriate adaptor for you camera). I might add that the printer serves as an all purpose memory card reader exceptionally well. Any card you put in appears as a removebale drive on your XP computer.

I must say, the use of this printer independently is very limited right out of the box. That is becasue it lacks a preview monitor. Forget about being able to print the right picture from many on a memory card - impossible unless you waste time and ink and paper on an index page. Also, the fancy features for cropping, resizing, rotating, etc are worthless absent the monitor. Since the monitor must be purchased separately at a third of the cost of the printer itself (for a tiny, tiny monitor), this is problematic. While HP photo printers are more expensive, they generally have built-in monitors, making the price more even w/ this one. But, the good news is that I just ordered a monitor for an older epson photo printer of ... very, very cheap. I called Epson, which told me that the monitor will work fine, it is just white instead of black.

Finally, I want to address the paper roller. Included is a roll of premium photo paper on a 4" wide roll. This is a GREAT idea. Since this printer can print all the way to the edges, you can produce high volume 4X6 prints easily. The printer will print them onto the roll paper and automatically cut them as it prints!! The result are prints that make my account with on-line digital photo processors obsolete. The only complaint is that the prints curl pretty substantially since they are on a roll.

In sum, a great printer. Sturdier construction than Epson has produced in the past, exceptional quality prints. The status screen is hard to read if the printer is on a tall surface. The paper is actually kind of difficult to load correctly. The lack of a preview monitor (and its supplemental expense) makes many of the features unusable. But these are really just technical points. At the price this printer is going for, it is a must have for amateur photographers.