Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

You have probably read a great deal of reviews about how wonderful the Epson Artisan 50 printer is. And as far as printing goes, especially on CDs, those reviews are spot on. Only one problem. I will wager the overwhelming majority of those 5 star reviews are coming from people who have yet to go through their first replacement cartridge cycle. Oh what a surprise they have in store for them. The SOB corporate scum at Epson engineered the printers to a) use only 60-70% of the ink in their OEM cartridges, b) retailed their own 6 OEM cartridges at prices ranging from a minimum of 350% to over 1200% of what non-OEM ink cartridge suppliers are charging (up to $35 a single cartridge) and c) have a chip-reset technology installed in the printers which will "fail to recognize" the vast majority of all non-OEM catridges and an estimated 33% of the GENUINE OEM cartridges. This is AFTER the company was sued in a 2006 case for doing the exact same thing and then went out and re-engineered the Artisan series of printers to be even WORSE! I swear to gawd, you can't make this crap up. As is well known, it only requires one cartridge requiring replacement in an Artisan model to disable the entire machine. Meaning that if you have a black print job to do and the yellow or light magenta cartridge is below it's functional level (usually meaning 30-40% of the ink remains but can't be used due to the technology they installed to rip people off), you can't finish your black only print job. And NO...every one of the six colors is NOT required to print black like I have heard some wags out there stating falsely. Even if that were true, in an emergency where you needed to print a single black text page out, you couldn't even print it in lighter gray to get by. If you buy the non-OEM cartridges you might...just MAYBE get one or two of them to work for 2 or 3 off and on cycles of the printer, but eventually they will require replacement when the orange print light starts blinking and the "non-compatible" error appears on your screen. This is apparently due to the ability of the software to stealth "report" information on the replacement cartridges through Epson's online access portal and then order the printer to shut down if the information retrieved fails to jibe with an OEM chip code. Even if you buy the OEM cartridges (which I did) and get lucky through the first four or five recycles, once you hit the end cartridge (dark cyan) the party is over. I have yet to hear of an Epson Artisan 50 that made it through two OEM dark cyan replacements without a cartridge rejection. Mine never made it through one. And for the record...Epson claims the ink usage issue is due to their fear of your precious printer being "damaged" should the ink level fall too low. To which I and most others say "BULLS***". The technology doesn't even read the ink levels...it "estimates" them...all to the manufacturer's massively profitable cause of "erring on the side of caution". What a surprise. The bottom line here is that the engineers at Epson set out to rip off every person that ever bought their printers by making them dysfunctional in the presence of all but OEM cartridges and then radically overpricing those OEM cartridges to wring massive profits out of hoodwinked consumers. And not only that, they installed this bug filled technology so that it goes haywire (an estimated) 33% of the time and rejects even their own overpriced replacements forcing the NEW AND UNUSED overpriced cartridge to be tossed and replaced with another NEW overpriced cartridge. The factual truth being that any buyer of these printers will likely have FAR more than the $120 cost of the printer invested in ink before the second cycle of cartridges is used up. Sort of like Exxon offering super cheap new cars to people that get 2 MPG and then raising the price of their gas to $500 a gallon knowing all along they engineered the super cheap new cars to self destruct if off brand gas is put in them. Doesn't take long to see that the price or handling/styling/quality characteristics of the car never figured into the equation to begin with. Get the printer if you want....it actually does print pretty good and you might even pick one up for nothing from a current owner who hasn't yet dropped it out of a 12 story window or backed over it with a truck after the ink ran out. There is a wealth of technology out there you can buy to circumvent the corporate Epson thieves. Supposedly there is a $30 chip reset device that overrides the reject tech and Amazon sells CIS ink tank equipment ($35-$80) which, if carefully installed, provide an endless ink supply and eliminates the problem at the source. But my question is why support these corporate scumbags and use their stuff to begin with knowing that you actually will have to go out and spend another $100+/- to defeat their thieving chip reset tech? REQUEST: Any updates on NEW class action lawsuits against Epson would be helpful in this review section as well. Maybe the second or third class action lawsuit against these SOBs will be the charm. UPDATE 2/19/2012: I contacted Epson to see what they would do about the failure for the Artisan 50 to recognize the infamous cyan (dark) cartridge. I spoke with a service rep. She ran me through everything I had already tried then promised to immediately send out another cyan cartridge to see if that would solve the problem. She was, of course, lying her ass off and I soon found out why. They had checked the warranty on my printer after I had given her the serial number, realized it was going to run out in 7 days, and never sent the cartridge. Once I tired of waiting for it and contacted them again with the reference number for the call, they told me..."Oh, we're so sorry...your warranty has run out and we can no longer help you". Epson aren't just low-life scumbags...they are criminals in my opinion. They have floated these absolutely worthless printers out there for the public to buy for the sole purpose of selling them enormously over-priced ink cartridges with technology designed to cause failure. Anyone who's had the misfortune to buy one of these printers should explore joining into a class action suit against the company.