Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My setup was flawless on a mac running OS X 10.10. I went right to the website and downloaded the installer to insure I had the latest version of everything. It installed to CUPS without incident. All of the options worked - fax, scan to pdf via the ADF, print plain, print photo, print CD. My first complaint? It prints the fax reports using color. uh, no thanks, Epson! I have never had a printer install so fast and easy ever. Print quality is amazing. I am replacing my Brother all-in-one since they dropped printing to CD/DVD's in their latest model and their print quality looks like something from the 80's. I have a few suggestions for those struggling with this model. First, you're buying a printer which does scanning, faxing, print to paper, print to photo, scan to cloud, email printing, print from memory cards so, yes, you can expect to read the manual. Gripes I see in the feedback are it won't print if the color runs out. yes it will - read the manual. Select plain paper, greyscale, and enable the option in the utility program. It won't print cardstock? yes it will - read the manual. There's a slot which opens in the rear for thick paper and there's a thick paper setting if it smears. If it's dumping ink on your paper, you have the wrong paper or the wrong settings. You've got draft, fast economy, economy, normal, fine, quality, and best quality. Nudge down the quality and don't select photo paper if you've got cheap paper - and, use good paper. Just because you put it on "best quality" doesn't mean it will be at its best unless you've got good paper in it. Don't put non-Epson ink in an Epson printer. Why are you buying Epson? You're buying it for their ink technology. If you think it's too expensive, buy something else. yes, you will spend the price of the printer in ink during the first year, probably. That's not because the ink is that expensive it's because Epson gives away the printer at cost to get you to buy their ink. Wireless networking does not work. Give it up. If you can print reliably to a wireless network without rebooting or cycling power on the printer and/or router than you are a genius. Give yourself a pat on the back. I'm using a wired Ethernet connection with a static IP address. USB... avoid it. It's too flaky, especially on a mac. Printing to CD's is a pain? I don't think so. It's just like my Brother printer - works better than my Brother printer. yea, it doesn't do the automatic tray thing like the Artisan which I'm not missing because I never owned one. I like the automatic output tray much better. I got tired of picking up printouts off the floor. Scan and double-sided printing of smaller than letter size? No, you need a high end scanner to scan receipts and I've never seen double-sided printing to card stock. I didn't expect this printer to handle that. Support for XP? Get real. That's dead. Support for Win10 or even OS X 10.11? You can't expect printer manufacturers to keep pace with the operating system De jour. Once a new operating system comes out the older printers will break and newer printers will be buggy at best. tip? Don't install the latest operation system.... ever. What does that get you? Just aggravation. You should be 8-12 months behind the latest operating system for the least head-ache's. Software and firmware updates? I ran the updater right after I installed and tested everything. It told me that updates were available for *everything*. I declined. If everything works perfectly then I have ZERO things to gain by updating. I can only break it or introduce problems. Why are you updating? Don't update your software or firmware unless you've got a darn good reason, like you foolishly installed 10.11 and broke everything. Do a test print once a week. I made up an image of RGB/CMYK and a sample photograph. Will that waste ink? Only if unclogging print heads is something you really enjoy doing. Consider it a pet which needs care and feeding once a week. If it sounds like too much maintenance than Epson really isn't for you. You're getting photo quality plus some nice all-in-one features. Buy a dust cover for it. A few dings - doesn't hold a lot of paper, although it has a second tray for small photo paper which is keen. There is a web interface which doesn't have all the settings forcing me to hunch over the LCD screen and go thru them all. And, the duplexer arrived broken (sigh). After I set everything up I see a bit of plastic in the bottom of the box and wondered where it went. That explained why I was getting some paper jams. I'm hoping Epson can just send me a new part rather than lugging the whole thing back to UPS to return it. I'm tempted to get a roll of duct tape, figuring this probably won't be the last printer I buy. Update 11/23/16 - Frustration starts to build. I contacted Epson about the broken duplexer. They sent me a form letter response back without reading my problem, offering for me to ship the printer back if it is still in warranty. That's not happening. I'm not lugging a 21lb printer up and down a flight of stairs plus boxing and unboxing it, plus shipping just to have Epson send me a new duplexer. Given the time and expense, I opted to just purchase a new duplexer which was less than a box of ink. Minus 1 star for lack of support. I also noticed that some of the color management dialogs are missing for this printer such as advanced black and white printing.