Excellent printer, if it weren't for the weakness below.

Poor support from Epson. The Vista driver has only a subset of the capabilities available in the XP driver. Ink choice, double-sided printing, print preview, and many other options are gone. When I contacted Epson, the rep blamed the problem on Microsoft, even though (his words) "Microsoft requested a driver for Vista and we [Epson] provided it." All-in-all, this pretty much reduces the expensive 1280 to a run-of-the-mill photo-quality printer with large format capabilities.

I've been using the Epson 1280 since shortly after it was introduced. It gave me great service until I bought a new computer running Windows Vista. See weaknesses below.

When it worked, the prints were nice and crisp, B&W text was sharp.

It used a lot of ink, fairly large for my desk.

I bought the Epson 1280 after a pro photographer friend highly recommend it, based on his satisfaction with the Epson 1270.
At first, it printed great prints, but then began to leave red and blue horizontal lines in everything I tried to print. The horizontal blue lines got so bad, when I tried to print text, it appeared to have a light blue background.
I went through the nozzle cleaning, etc. but to no avail. The printer became totally useless.

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I've used other Epsons and Canon printers.

The printer produced nice prints at first at a good speed. I liked the borderless printing too. Ink cartridges are easy to change and are readily available. Although it is a bit wide, the printer is not tall and fit well into my computer hutch.

Print heads clog easily if the printer is not used often. I noticed that you need to keep it in use as it seemed the more you used it, the better it printed. But the constant streaking of prints became worse and I was unable to find a way to find a solution to the problem.

I bought the 1280 printer based on rave reviews by a fellow photographer who owned the Epson 1270. It worked fine for a short time, but then began to leave blue and red horizontal lines in anything I printed. I tried all the nozzle cleaner, head cleaner, etc but nothing helped. I have never been able to get a print without those lines since they first began showing up.
At first, I thought it was just a problem with color printing but the lines also appear when printing black and white text. It has gotten so bad now that when printing black and white, the entire area of the text has almost a solid blue background! The printer is now considered totally useless by me and I am in the market now for a new printer.

Customer Service

not applicable

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I used two Canon printers before this one, one being a B&W model only that made fantastic text prints, the other one being a color printer.

Not too big or heavy.. I should be able to throw it out the window pretty far.

Ink blobs on borderless printings.
Clogged ink heads.
Feeder backs up and prints double image.
Waste of $$$$
Slow
Ink, paper and time waste.

Big piece of junk. This is the second and last Epson printer that I will own. When they work, they do produce outstanding results. However, they rarely work. I thought maybe the 800 I had in the beginning was a bad one. But this 1280 has had issues since day one. First, when printing borderless, big blob of ink in the same corner. Every time. Then the infamous ink clogs. The stories you read about all over the internet are true. Count on it. Both on this 1280 and the 800 I had previous. Wasted ink & $$$ constantly cleaning heads. Now this pos has another problem... as it feeds through while printing, it will often back up about an inch and then print on top of what it just printed resulting in a double image. Then throw away another wasted print and print again. When considering all the wasted money in time, ink and paper on top of the frustration just to get one good print, it's just not worth it. I can't believe these companies can get away with these type of business practices. Just stay away from all Epson products. I wish I could rate it lower than 1 star.

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Epson Stylus Color 800

incredible resolution and color reproduction

expensive if you don''t print anything larger than letter size, expensive ink, used up rather quickly, slow to print (~30 minutes for 8x10 at 2880), don''t know how long the prints last

This is an incredible printer. But it is not perfect. Let''s get the imperfection over with first. It does no better job on plain paper than any other cheap ink jet. It draws down expensive inks to print just my daughter''s school work, which is mostly text and some pictures, at the same rate of consumption as if I was printing a high res full page picture. It is large and shakes the all metal printer stand when printing. Now the good part. It is just perfect for a home digital lab. Period. The prints are so great that they are actually better than wet lab prints from anything short of a high end custom lab cibachrome job. I beg to differ with other posters that 1440 or 2880 does not make difference. I use Canon FS4000 to scan my slides (which seems to like Fuji slides better than Kodak ones, especially Kodachrome). 1440 at 8x10" is still great, actually better than a wet lab enlarged print of the same size, but 2880 shows visible improvement, it is grainless at 8x10, short of using a loupe. I haven''t tried 11x17 yet, will know this weekend.

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HP, Lexmark, not photo pinters, though

everything you can ask from a printer

physical size

This is my second review for this printer the previous one was about 7 months ago, I just wants to say that except for the amaizing prints that this printer produces I had no problem with it since I bought it and I printed hundreds of prints in all sizes and all are indistinguishable from a lab prints and some even better colorwise . I''m very happy with this one and if you''re looking for an amaizing quality in a reasonable price there''s no doubt this is the one for you.

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I don''t think there''s anything similar

Awesome selection of QUALITY papers! the best papers out there! Unbelieveable print quality! Great tech support.

Ink hard to find in stores believe it or not. In order to print borderless you must use the software that came with the printer and can''t import retouched photos(unless I am doing it wrong).

AWESOME!!! Read reviews and researched for over 4 months. Was torn between this and HP. Very happy I went with this printer. Awesome prints. Have not printed larger than 8x10 yet but those are incredible! Can''t tell the difference. Customers are amazed when I show them digital photos with Olympus E-10 and 1280. I am a Pro photographer but not a computer guru by any stretch. I love this printer. As far as tech support, GREAT! Don''t be frightened that I had to call tech support. It was what I thought was a very minor software issue where it would not print two true 5x7s on a letter sheet. Within 5 minutes they were writing up a ticket to send me a new printer with prepaid postage on the old one. Don''t waste any more time or worries this is an awesome printer. I don''t think there is a need to go to the 2880 setting. Even the 720 setting is incredible and probalby sufficient for most people who just want good prints at an economical price. The roll paper is easy to use and very convenient for printing multiple photos. It''s like a photo lab in your living room (or where ever you print). You will not regret this printer.

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HP and Canon

High quality prints. Has third party ink bottles available that should save big dollars.

Setting the color profile between screen and printer will take some work (unless your lucky). Color ink goes fast!

For the money this is one sharp printer. I was somewhat suprise that even on the high quality setting the printer was fairly fast with an 8X10. Most won''t know that your prints can off a printer..

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None

Powerful printer driver, industry standard printer, very good user community support. Paper handling is wonderful. Included Photoshop Elements is a great product for digital photography enthusiasts.

Company changes ink formulations without supporting the resulting new color profiles, placing the burden of color accuracy on the user.

Consider this review an addendum to everything great that has been written about this printer. There is a gotcha, and it is a big one. Epson has recently changed their ink formulation. They did so without warning to their patrons, and without support for the ink''s new color profile. If you are buying this printer for color accuracy, you should be aware that out of the box, it is not accurate. If you have your own color profiling systems, or intend to purchase one, than the 1280 is an excellent choice. If you depend on the printer company to provide color accuracy for their main ink/paper product lines, than stear away.

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None

Incredible print resolution, supports many types of papers up to SuperB., FAST, quiet, USB connection

None

I purchased this printer for schoolwork in photo and graphic design and I have not been disapointed. It has incredible print quality, color saturation, and speed. Printing a full color photo at 720 dpi at 11x14 takes less time than my HP deskjet. The USB also allows me to use it on both a PC and a MAC, a big plus for my line of work. I highly recommend this printer, but use good paper to get the best prints.

Customer Service

none so far

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Hewlett Packard DeskJets