charlie@genrad.com (Charlie D. Havener) (05/19/89)
EPSON LQ850 Printer - A tail of woe If you buy an EPSON you get a meager 1 year warranty. My LQ850 died after about 1 year and a month. ( Panasonics have a 2 yr warranty). Recent articles in this news group have advocated considering the importance of paper handling and forms feeding in the printer. This is what I did when I bought the LQ850. It has a very sophisticated paper handling mechanism and therein lies the problem. Even when it was working we had frequent paper jams ( my wife hated it). Something went belly up because it intermittantly thinks it has no paper in it when it does. This causes it to spew paper back off the tractor feed when unloading or run single sheets thru without stopping. I took it to an authorized Epson dealer for service ( Atlantic Computer in Waltham Mass. ) for which I expected to pay a nominal fee to have a sensor switch or something replaced. After a month they announced it would cost me $200+ for a board swap. I had to pay the $35 bench minimum just to get it back. Needless to say I have not invested another $200+ in this $500 printer. Instead I bought a Panasonic 1091i for $150. It is 9 pin and simple ( My wife loves it!) The letter quality mode of the LQ850 was excellent but a major disadvantage was the faintness of the characters even with new ribbons. I suspect this may be endemic in 24 pin printers but I am not sure. I guess my next step will be to write to Epson and see if they will stand behind their printer. Stay tuned for further developments ... charlie@genrad.com
allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) (05/25/89)
As quoted from <21092@genrad.UUCP> by charlie@genrad.com (Charlie D. Havener): +--------------- | simple ( My wife loves it!) The letter quality mode of the LQ850 was | excellent but a major disadvantage was the faintness of the characters | even with new ribbons. I suspect this may be endemic in 24 pin printers | but I am not sure. +--------------- I don't know how common it is, but I *do* know that my Okidata 390 with fancy form control and 24 pins works fine and prints nice and dark in NLQ mode. (It also emulates the Epson LQ series.) ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc allbery@ncoast.org uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu Send comp.sources.misc submissions to comp-sources-misc@<backbone> NCoast Public Access UN*X - (216) 781-6201, 300/1200/2400 baud, login: makeuser
werner@aecom.yu.edu (Craig Werner) (05/28/89)
> As quoted from <21092@genrad.UUCP> by charlie@genrad.com (Charlie D. Havener): > +--------------- > | simple ( My wife loves it!) The letter quality mode of the LQ850 was > | excellent but a major disadvantage was the faintness of the characters > | even with new ribbons. I suspect this may be endemic in 24 pin printers > | but I am not sure. I recently bought both an LQ500 and an LQ850. One of my first impressions was just how dark the NLQ Roman font was. Is it possible that this particular printhead is just a real turkey, and that the faintness is neither endemic to Epsons in particular onr 24pin printers in general? -- Craig Werner (future MD/PhD, 4.5 years down, 2.5 to go) werner@aecom.YU.EDU -- Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517) "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."