Bad points:
The only negative comments I have are quite superficial and it should be noted
that we computer science students seem to have a genetic propensity for pointless
trivialities!
Generic issues:
1) It comes with 20 sheets of photo paper but the ink cartridge prints 100 photos.
Because the paper input tray holds 20 sheets, that is all they supply, so buy
an Epson PicturePack (Includes Photo Cartridge and 100 photo paper sheets RRP
£21.50) or an 10 sheet pack or glossy photo paper (RRP £02.50)!
2) The rechargeable battery is not included (AAP £49.99), I would have
paid a bit more if it was. Okay, if this wasn't being marketed as a portable
system then fine it is an option, but it is and have you ever bought a laptop
without a battery? I have thus not located a supplier within the United Kingdom
that sells the optional battery.
3) No USB cable is included (RRP £2.50), maybe they think its unnecessary,
but they do supply the computer drivers and have you ever bought a printer without
a data cable? I could understand no batteries but no USB cable?
Hardware issues:
1) Like all photo printers I've used, it doesn't automatically resample images,
the relative resolution of a digital photo (ie its total output size) is slightly
larger than the photo paper so approximately 1.5 cm around the perimeter of
the photo is not printed (note that the area to be removed is indicated by a
border when previewing photos individually).
2) Media devices can not be accessed concurrently, not really a bad thing but
annoying as I would like to setup a print run from 3 memory cards then walk
away for a coffee.
3) Depending on the nature of your photos, the ink cartridge can, under special
conditions, only last for a little as about twenty pictures. I regularly get
88-95 prints per cartridge, but I tend to do my photo adjustments with Paint
Shop Pro before printing otherwise dark photos
4) The cover protecting the media card slots is slightly adynamic and just
not very robust,
5) Unlike the media card slots, there is no cover protecting the EXT/Print
and SUB ports, also these ports are quite deeply recessed into the body thus
preventing use of less compact flash media drives.
Printing issues:
1) When printing photos, the LCD screen displays the total sheets to be printed
and the number remaining, I would like information about the estimated lapse
/ time remaining. It would also be nice if it displayed the photo being printed
as a background for the screen (like it does for the top level menu screen)..
2) Despite any claims by Epson, printing times are variable depending on factors
such as ink level, complexity of the job and photo resolution. When printing
groups of photos the time taken averages out to about 37 seconds for standard
5 megapixel prints. Printing 4 different Passport size photos takes about 1
minute and 64 seconds and index prints (20 photos per sheet) takes about 1 minute
and 5 seconds (not including ink charging time with is about 20 seconds) .
3) The index view does not show how many sheets are required to complete the
total job, this is normally 1 per print but in the case of index, passport and
double formats this is not true. This information is included when previewing
photos individually.
4) This may sound like a strange complaint but, apart from photo enhancement
being set to ‘off' by default, there are no economy or resolution options.
You could say it's a photo printer, so why create ‘bad' prints? However,
I often want to quickly print a ‘throw-away' photo on cheap paper. You
can get economy paper so why waste ink on poor quality paper (and remembering
the less ink you use, the quicker the process)?
5) Good computer driver interface, but does not include all the photo effects
& options available from the printers interface. Note that the host applications
native printing configuration overrides critical orientation, page area and
aspect ratio settings which need to be manually adjusted.
6) The preview option of the computer interface does not allow changes to the
settings, you can only cancel. Although this isn't hard, it is slightly annoying
if the host application does not save the last used settings so you must then
start again from the default settings.
Interaction issues:
1) Photos are displayed in descending alphabetic order according to the photo
file names, thus photos from a camera will seem to be displayed in the order
they were taken, but this is totally dependent on the naming conventions of
your camera. This can seem quote disorienting with large volumes of photos organised
with real file names.
Most often photos are named with a short prefix then an incremental value equal
to the total number of photos taken since it was first used.
2) Cropping photos must be done one at a time, ie there is no way to apply
cropping to a set of range of photos, annoying as this is often required for
groups of photos and is time consuming.
3) when printing photos with frames, they can not be rotated or cropped and
there is no preview when printing photos with frames from a media card, as opposed
to the 16 default frames where there is. This means the manipulation must be
done elsewhere first.
4) After scrolling through a set of photos and then printing a single image,
the index preview returns to the first image in the set, not from the previous
position, quote disorienting with large volumes of photos.
5) Scrolling through a set of photos can start at the beginning or from the
end of the group but the index view could be more efficient if there was a way
to ‘skip' forward and backwards through each set of 9 photos, in addition
to scrolling forward and backwards through the photos individually.
6) There is no way to filter photo formats, all JPEG and TIFF images are shown,
I would like to select which types are displayed. Also I would like it to identify
any ‘unpaintable' images (ie too big/small/wrong resolution), instead
of ignoring them.
Software issues:
1) The directory structure of the storage media is ignored by the preview and
selection displays, ie all photos are grouped together regardless of their physical
location within the storage media.
A file explorer type view or some separation between photo sets would be nice.
Note that the display can be sorted by date, but that's not quite helpful enough
for a large volume of photos.
2) The date & time stamp, colour, size and position are not configurable,
annoying if photos happen to include yellow, orange or red in the botton right
area (depending on orientation). There is no format for a 2 digit year and the
most compact format is american ie yyyy.mm.dd, (ie backwards and full stop (not
slash) delimited)
3) Depending on the relative resolution, photo previews are not generated instantly
and initially produce a low-res picture on the LCD but refines quickly - not
a real issue but this can be time consuming if scrolling through many preview
displays looking for a photo.
4) There is no provision to organise or manipulate the images on the storage
media, since the directory structure is totally ignored, but I would like the
ability to selectively delete groups by date or selected photos and the ability
to format the media, indeed this can be done from the camera but that's not
always possible, I often find someone has taken the media reader and the camera
is in use.
Recommended: Click Here to check your PC for common system errors
Previous Page (2/4)
