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While 30 years sounds pretty good, it's still well shy of Epsons claim of 100 years for some pigment inks - read Epsons' paper on lightfastness here.

All particular claims of durability rely on a known combination of ink and paper though, so if you are looking at a printer and relying on claims of durability be sure to factor in paper costs as well!

It's not quite 8', but a customer of mine has an Epson Stylus Pro 10k. It can print almost 4' wide prints up to 1000' long (if you have the patience and money for ink, it only does 25 sq ft per hour at max res and eats ink tanks). Max res is 1440*720. I've been looking for something great to print since their prepress dept head has offered to print a couple things for me for doing such a good job on a backup problem they were having.

Mine is over 280 megapixels. The depth of field is rather limited, though, and the focus range is rather short. Still, not bad for a ~$100 purchase.

Actually many, many people would probably love a living room printer that they could just run a few prints from. A small USB photo printer would be perfect, along with iPhoto library sharing, for a visitor to select prints on a laptop and take away a few copies...

Who else think a printer in the living room is a great idea? How about Epson.

We've undertaken a pretty large archiving job at my university. We're scanning every page of every newspaper we've ever printed (started in 1927) up to the time we have digital archives starting around 1993 or so. We're also scanning about 80 300 page yearbooks. Hopefully this can offer you some help or suggestions.

We have a dual-processor G4 and an Epson 1640XL large-format FireWire scanner with the optional auto document feeder. It's probably a bit out of your budget ($2899 + ~$1200 for the ADF) but it's awesome. It can scan at up to 1600dpi and the ADF can automatically duplex and scan both sides of the page. We're using OmniPage Pro X for OCR software.

Right now we're more concerned with scanning the documents and getting them online, so we haven't started OCR'ing everything yet. But the ADF is awesome. It can scan both sides of all 300+ pages of a yearbook automatically in about 2 1/2 hours.

The newspapers are a bit different. They're getting a bit fragile in their old age so we have to manually scan them. We scan them at 300dpi in full color, so the 12x18 pages are around 50MB per page. But the scanner takes less than a minute per page. It's impressive.

We use Photoshop's web gallery feature to generate the image galleries. Pretty simple really. Let me know if you have any questions.

Plenty of companies pride themselves on their Point Of Sale products (cash registers, barcode scanners, etc.)... which makes for some funny stuff. Epson's retail device sales page, for example... page title.. "Epson's POS Products." now that's good marketing. "Buy our POS Products!"

Now if Apple will only get on the ball and release the OS X drivers for my imagewriter...

Basically, without some rather advanced electronics skills, you're SOL.

Oh, and don't just hook up a display's power without providing the proper clock signals ... the liquid crystals will decompose through electrolysis.

It's stories like these that make me regret taking apart my IIgs to use for wall decorations. Well, at least I still have my Equity II.

But this should make some extra-fine wall-paper...real wall-paper I mean. A friend of mine has the Epson 9600 44" wide, 2880 x 1440 dpi archival ink printer. He's driving it with a G5 with 4 gigs of RAM via the FireWire interface, so he should have more than enough system to print it. I sent him the link.

It ticks me off I can't find a decent 24 pin dot matrix new anymore

Epson still make dot-matrix printers. See the Impact Printers category on Epson's website.

I've got a $2900 Epson Expression 1640XL large-format flatbed scanner at work. (Not sure if the link will work for y'all...looks like it uses cookies...if not, just go to their site and click on Scanners.) The optical resolution is 1600dpi and the scanning bed is 13" x 19". Even at the maximum resolution of 1600dpi, the images are tack-sharp--it's almost like looking through a microscope.

At 1600dpi, the theoretical maximum image size is 20800 x 30400, or approximately 632 megapixels. Photoshop 7 reports that a 20800 x 30000 (it only goes up to 30000 pixels) RGB image would be 1.74 GB.

So, if you could expose a large enough piece of film (there's an optional transparency adapter), scan an original piece of art, or convert the scanner into some kind of mega-scanning-back camera, you could get some damn impressive images out of it, I'd think.

I've never tried scanning such a large image with it--don't have enough RAM--but with the FireWire interface, it'd probably be a lot faster than stitching all of those digicam images together.

Slightly OT, but if you remember this story, and my suggestion? Well it looks like Epson has a solution at varous price point (and yes I noted the reply :).

Also if purchasing an Epson printer? Go for the middle of the road, and KEEP IT CLEAN. Ink and paper dust make a nasty mess, and can eventually cause misfeeds. Also make certain nothing has fallen into the paper path.

--
AC who's fixed way too many printers.

TechTV also had a review of projectors under $1000 in September. It featured the Epson PowerLite S1, the Toshiba TLP-S10, and the Gateway 205 Projector. The Gateway came out on top but check out the full review here.

Hi molo. Print them with a professional digital lab. Do not take your CF cards to Wal-Mart or something. We often use Reedy or Miller's. They both do a great job, and have free customized FTP software that let you select what size prints you want, what crops you want for off sizes (i.e., a 5x7 print from a 2:3 aspect ratio file), additional features like type of paper, etc, and then upload. Your prints arrive on your doorstep a few days later. You can either have them just print the files as is, (in which case a 4x6 is about $0.35) or have them color correct the files, in which case a 4x6 is something like $1.25. We print "as is", because we've got a Gretag Macbetch Eye-One Photo calibrator, which I know is what Reedy uses to calibrate their monitors, but I don't know about Miller's. Regardless, when calibrated, the color I see on the screen is the color that comes back in my prints. There are less expensive calibrators out there you can buy, or if you can find a friend who has one, have him stop by with it can calibrate your monitor.

Also, I'm planning to buy an Epson 2200 printer which will let you print up to an 8x10. I know pros who swear by them. However, it's probably about the same cost if not more expensive per print, given the high ink and paper costs, than having your images printed at a pro lab. I just want one for rush orders.

Big prints like 20x30 can certainly be made from a 10D JPEG, but we usually rasterize them first with Genuine Fractals. So long as it's a full-frame image and well exposed, you really shouldn't have a problem printing a 20x30. For anything bigger, I'd switch to RAW and definitely rasterize.

Anyway, long story short, find a pro lab. Don't print at Wal-Mart. You can make big prints, too.

In any case, I would strongly recomend against a color laser printer for proofs: they just don't have the resolution that a high-end inkjet printer gives you on good paper (not costco $.50/ream shit). My recomendation would be either a tabloid printer (if you need the size), or a photo printer of some sort. My epson bias is based on some very very poor experiances with HP, whereas Epson's printershave been rock solid for me. Xerox has some nice looking equipment too, though I have never used it.

In any case, I would strongly recomend against a color laser printer for proofs: they just don't have the resolution that a high-end inkjet printer gives you on good paper (not costco $.50/ream shit). My recomendation would be either a tabloid printer (if you need the size), or a photo printer of some sort. My epson bias is based on some very very poor experiances with HP, whereas Epson's printershave been rock solid for me. Xerox has some nice looking equipment too, though I have never used it.

...a more robust setup. I would recommend a monochrome laser printer for text operations, paired with a dye sublimation printer for color.

I use two Kodak 8650 printers (pick one up for a couple grand on ebay) for a commercial application that is probably beyond the scope of the submitter, but the quality (indistinguishable from a lab print), reliability (over 800 9x14" prints/week at times), and durability (light-fast for more than 20 years)

Olympus, Kodak, Sony, and others have items at more reasonable price points.

No doubt; for color, go dye-sub. Then again, I own an Epson 1280 photo that does really nice work as well. I have installed an Epson 2200 for a couple of clients and they are even better.

as a load of people have already stated before, the manufacturers cut down on production cost for their printers. this is a logical second step to increase revenue. the first step was to force customers to pay periodically for expensive cartridges. now is the time to make printers themselves replaceable.

generally, it is a clever move. you can choose between long life with a professional printer and manufacturer ink, or you can try to get away cheaper with a consumer-grade printer in combination with non-original ink.

any other way won't work.

and, on a side note:

my personal experience as an employee of an epson service partner is

DO NOT USE COMPATIBLE INK CARTRIDGES IN EPSON PRINTERS!

70-80% of the epson inkjet printers we get back for servicing have clogged printheads due to the use of cheap ink. the consistency of some non-original ink is thicker than that of the original used by the manufacturer. as epson states in its FAQ, the ink is specially designed to match these printers' advanced printhead technology. and this is not a marketing trick. there is substance to this statement.

as seductive as these offers are, i would not recommend using them...

as a load of people have already stated before, the manufacturers cut down on production cost for their printers. this is a logical second step to increase revenue. the first step was to force customers to pay periodically for expensive cartridges. now is the time to make printers themselves replaceable.

generally, it is a clever move. you can choose between long life with a professional printer and manufacturer ink, or you can try to get away cheaper with a consumer-grade printer in combination with non-original ink.

any other way won't work.

and, on a side note:

my personal experience as an employee of an epson service partner is

DO NOT USE COMPATIBLE INK CARTRIDGES IN EPSON PRINTERS!

70-80% of the epson inkjet printers we get back for servicing have clogged printheads due to the use of cheap ink. the consistency of some non-original ink is thicker than that of the original used by the manufacturer. as epson states in its FAQ, the ink is specially designed to match these printers' advanced printhead technology. and this is not a marketing trick. there is substance to this statement.

as seductive as these offers are, i would not recommend using them...

Shutterfly - great if you plan to use Internet Explorer to communicate with the site, they have an ActiveX plug-in, where you can select multiple files to upload. Warning though, you will not be able to download your photos in original resolution once you upload them. The only way to get back a high-res photo is to buy a CD from Shutterfly.

Epson Photo Center - one of the few services where you can download exactly the same resolution as you uploaded, so great for storing large pictures. Except that they require Web forms for the photos to be uploaded, and the Web forms they have accept a single photo at a time (maximum of 10-20 per page, if I recall). Might spend your whole evening clicking and selecting, when downloading 1000 new images off your flash card.

Ofoto - nothing too thrilling, pretty much the same offering as Shuttefly without the ActiveX plug in for multiple uploads. Has connections with Amazon, so it's possible to get some promotinal free photos with them if you buy some related items at Amazon. I got 25 free photos with the software I bought at Amazon site.

Yahoo! Photos - 30 megs is a bummer, but if you use other Yahoo! services regularly, might find the site easier to navigate and play with. Although all other guys mentioned above allow unlimited (well, supposedly) hosting and sharing.

Yeah, and they're just now coming out with the Perfection 2400 (few weeks maybe).

I can't wait to get my hands on one of these. I have yet to hear about Linux support, tho.

As far as the keyboard and mouse...well, let's not push it!

A couple of the new Epson inkjets feature a mixture of Pigment & Dye inks (previous Epson printers just used Dye).

The advantages of Pigment ink, aside from crisper black/colour, no bleeding, and 70 years of lightfastness, is that the cartridges last a lot longer. I have an Epson C80 which really does print out a thousand detailed sheets of black text in one go. I know that's not a lot compared to laser land, but it sure beats the rest of the consumer inkjet offerings. This technology has trickled down from their professional line of printers -- the C80 is very cheap. Inkjet vs. Laser could go the way of ATA vs. SCSI, in terms of the poorer technology improving so much that it's acceptable for most people.

Since I, and so many other Mac OSX users, have have been treated by Epson this way (BUY A NEW PRINTER! FEED INTO CONSUMERISM!), I doubt many of us will be buying epson in the future. Too bad. It was a great printer.

Read the list again: Epson Stylus Color 900G FireWire printer, Epson Expression 1600 and Umax PowerLook 1100 FireWire scanners. There are also FireWire CD-R/RW drives, an ORB drive, analog-to-digital video converters, synthesizers, mixers, VCRs, HDTVs, network storage, DAT, DVD-RAM, DVD changer, video editors, camcorders, and data analyzers. RePlayTV even uses FireWire.

Philips recently demoed a wireless FireWire network, fast enough for real-time audio- and video-streaming at 46-Mbit/sec at distances far exceeding 10 meters (BlueTooth maxes at 1-Mbit/s, HomeRF at 1.6 Mbit/s, and IEEE 802.11 at 11-Mbit/s). Check out Wi-LAN, the self-proclaimed future of high-speed wireless, for more info.

Here's another list of FireWire products.

No, FireWire is not for regular modems. But USB does not work for Cable and DSL modems, either. FireWire could substitute for the Ethernet port in broadband application. USB cannot.

Read the list again: Epson Stylus Color 900G FireWire printer, Epson Expression 1600 and Umax PowerLook 1100 FireWire scanners. There are also FireWire CD-R/RW drives, an ORB drive, analog-to-digital video converters, synthesizers, mixers, VCRs, HDTVs, network storage, DAT, DVD-RAM, DVD changer, video editors, camcorders, and data analyzers. RePlayTV even uses FireWire.

Philips recently demoed a wireless FireWire network, fast enough for real-time audio- and video-streaming at 46-Mbit/sec at distances far exceeding 10 meters (BlueTooth maxes at 1-Mbit/s, HomeRF at 1.6 Mbit/s, and IEEE 802.11 at 11-Mbit/s). Check out Wi-LAN, the self-proclaimed future of high-speed wireless, for more info.

Here's another list of FireWire products.

No, FireWire is not for regular modems. But USB does not work for Cable and DSL modems, either. FireWire could substitute for the Ethernet port in broadband application. USB cannot.

But, there are SO MANY games that aren't even ported to the Mac yet? I very mich like the "Theme" games (Theme Park, Theme Hospital, etc.) and that company (BullFrog) has no interest in porting their games to anything else (and their website doesn't appear to work under Linux/NN4.7!, and there doesn't seem to be an e-mail address for their webmaster --- the pop-up for "Credits" fails to show the image that actually tells who is responsible!).

For that matter, has anyone ever heard anything from the Myst/Riven people (Cyan) about porting either to Linux? At least THEY have a Mac port...

Sorry to be sort of an unenthusiastic wet noodle about what really is good news, but it just seems that we jump whenever any company throws us a bone, while the others just completely ignore us. (I've been trying to get specs from Epson so that I can use my new color pritner, but their response has been basically "What's Linux?"), so I suppose that's coloring (no pun intended) my attitude.

where does such a respectable publication get off saying such things as "horrible teenage sex"?

Sex is a BEAUTIFUL thing between two very loving individuals. Sex is not a "horrible" action, but one of love, sacrifice, and mutual enjoyment. Pictures of such an act should be held in the highest esteem and broadcasted throughout the land...

And sex between teenagers is nothing but the purest of sex... that where individuals haven't been corrupted by money and power, and having their backs broken by middle management... okay, if it was between two UGLY teenagers having sex... maybe... but even then the ability for two grotesque individuals to find someone to share their special feelings with is a very very special occasion and also one which should be celebrated.

And if you'd like to start a web site to celebrate ugly teenagers having sex, www.uglyteensex.com is not yet registered!

So everyone, go out and visit your favorite site that supports the freedom of expression and passes along these beautiful images of sex and allows you to take them home with you and possibly even print them out (if you have a color printer).

ciao!