I'm really interested to hear about anyone's experience with the Epson photo printer ink cartridges. I just purchased the 700 series Stylus Photo EX printer (which uses the same 6 ink cartridge as their original Stylus Photo printer) and was shocked when my "Replace Color Cartridge" warning came up after printing literally only 12 8x10 in. normal density/color photo images at 1440 dpi.!! Epson's literature claims 220 pages at 15% coverage (a completely irrelevant stat for a photo printer altho it is supposedly an industry standard unit of "measure") which an Epson tech told me is for printing at 360 dpi. For 720 dpi their figure translates to 55 sheets/prints and at 1440 dpi it's , you guessed it, 12 or less!! These ARE amazing quality prints but at this price per print (over $5), including photo glossy paper, it works out to be almost the same price as my local service bureau's digitaltophoto paper prints and half the price of their dyesub prints, both of which beat up the Epson prints when all is said and done. The good news comes from a local distributor who has spent many hours at trade shows with the original Stylus Photo printer and experienced 5060 full page, full color prints per cartridge which is much more like it! So who is right? I would love to feel fully confident in this distributer's own inthefield stats but they are 5 times more generous than Epson's own claims. He suggested, by the way, that I remove the cartridge and tap out/dislodge any possible air bubbles and IT WORKED  the "replace cartridge" warning disappeared! (However, my visual inspection of the cartridge DID show it to be less than half full. Also, Epson explicitly recommends against removing the cartridges between actual replacement periods. ) Has anyone else had similar experiences and what kind of print counts are you getting from your Epson Photo printers?

-- Ray Van Dusen (rvandusn@aei.ca), July 22, 1998

Answers

As a point of interest to those that have an Epson photo printer You will be able to purchase a replacement cartridge after Aug 1st which will be refined down to 1/2 micron of purity. It will sell for 21.95+shipping to your area.As you may know thats about 1/2 the price of a current cartridge. Please e-mail to above address for any other info .

-- Al Barcelow-JRInk of Azusa Ca. (ajb@tstonramp.com), July 25, 1998.

I get 25 7.5" x 10" out of my original stylus photo before the "replace cartridge" message comes on.

I get 5 more after removing and reinserting the cartridge.

BTW: Check your manual under "replacing an outdated cartridge" for the correct sequence to use when replacing a cartridge that is REALLY empty.

-- Bill Ling (macmaven@pacbell.net), July 27, 1998.

One week later... just to follow up on my initial querie, for anyone interested: my first color cartridge actually bit the dust after 25 8x10s at 1440dpi, 2 at 720dpi and about a dozen head cleanings. The warning light did NOT come on, htere was just no magenta ink on the final print. So I'll have to learn how Bill squeezes more prints out than that. Still, I wish that Epson would be a bit more ecologically and economically savvy by designing a resevoir holding twice as much ink capacity (thereby saving both owners and the environment from double the cartridge containers).

-- Ray Van Dusen (rvandusn@aei.ca), July 29, 1998.

So Ray, not sure how you figured over $5.00 per print. Even figuring that you thought you were only getting 12 prints per cartridge and then it turned out to be 25, this would translate to about $2.50 per print. I pay less than 0.60 per sheet of paper. I pay about $14.50 for a color cartridge so that would be less than 0.50 for ink. Maybe a little over a buck a print isn't it? Also, see my post under Photo vs. Inkjet or something like that. --Rick

-- Rick Fleming (Montanan1@aol.com), July 29, 1998.