I have been reading the message archive and came across an anonymous posting from someone who appears to be a journalist and who is rather cynical about Epson printers regularly winning printer group test reviews.
I feel I need to take issue with this person because I think his message could be fair at heart but misleading in reality.
I regularly test printers too as a freelance IT journalist. If 'anonymous' feels that blind 'tasting' of the output of HP, Lexmark, and Epson ink-jet output proves Epson is regularly not the best in his experience, I respect his experience but beg to differ. I may have an explanation, however.
Both Lexmark and HP ink-jet printers have a very high standard of text and line graphics print quality on plain paper. If 'anonymous' is talking about this kind of output - I would wholeheartedly agree that Epson is not necessarily the best.
The problem is that he doesn't clearly specify what kind of output he is comparing. I'm particularly interested in photo print quality and having looked at all the latest printers recently, both the Canon BJC-8200 and the Epson Stylus 870 Photo (in particular) are streets ahead of anything HP and Lexmark can muster. But I wouldn't recommend either the Canon 8200 or the Epson 870 to someone wishing to do frequent runs of high quality text.
HP and Lexmark offer great all-rounders, capable of excellent text and good (but not outstanding) photo output. But if you your priority is photo quality on photo paper, the Canon and Epson models are the ones to go for.
Ian

Reading the previous review on Printers I wondered if anyone can help me. I have an Epson Stylus Photo 1200 printer and am extremely unhappy with its performance. for printing photo quality pictures the colours are always way out, especially blue which I find almost impossible to achieve anything with any brightness. Please if any one can sugest what I am doing wrong or coments on the printer it would be very much appreciated.
THanks Natasha Huntley