What I picked up, for a darned good price, was an Epson WorkForce 545, multi-function, printer. It was only $64.99, on sale at Staples, not bad at all. I also grabbed 4 extra ink cartridges, it uses 1 black ink and 3 color ink cartridges. I chose the extra high capacity ones. Funny how things work out but the ink actually cost more than the printer by several dollars. The printer companies sure gouge every penny they can with the ink.I don't know much about how well this printer actually prints but my guess is that it will be satisfactory for me. I am certain that the text mode will be excellent but am not too sure about how well it will print photographs. If it does a good to very good job on the photos, I will be quite happy. If it scans well that will be another big plus. I usually only buy items like this for which I can find a decent review on CNET or from PC Magazine but none were to be found. Still, the features on this one are what I wanted, including the fact that it uses the extra high capacity ink cartridges (only a few bucks more each than the high capacity cartridges but supposedly print double the amount of prints). I did see a lot of user feedback saying this is a great model and I am hoping that at least a few to several of those reviews were for real and not entered by some Epson employee whose sole job it is to enter review after review of Epson products, like this printer, so as to inflate the good to excellent ratings for it.
One thing I do not like about the printer, and yes this is before even taking it out of the box, is the size of it. It is huge compared to any ink jet printer I have owned in the past and this is basically a mid-sized model from what I can tell! I will live with it though since about the only other thing that will be on my desk top (as in real desk top and not virtual desk top) will be my laptop. Well, that is once I clean it off, lots of stuff/junk there now, it has become a repository for anything for which I need a place to sit something. One of those things is my Hova-Bator incubator with five Hermann's Tortoise eggs in it. Once they hatch the incubator goes back on the shelf but for now I guess it will share desk top space with the printer for at least a couple to a few more weeks.
Once I get the printer out of the car, get it set up, and print a good number of documents, graphics, photos and scan a good number of photos and other documents, maybe make a few copies of things and send a fax or three too, I will let you know how I think it works.
All the best,
Glenn B
