Next message: Jeff Thomas: "[WinMac] NT2000server Vs Novell"
A bit of follow-up here. I posted this "bargain" originally, and I received
my printer last Thursday. It's a bit of a dissapointment, and I still have
some unresolved issues with it. I hope this is useful, because the printer
is still on sale here:
http://www.zones.com/cgi-bin/zones.exe/zones/scripts/product/product.jsp?src
hStyle=RESULTS&productID=122485 for $229.98, and some of you may be tempted
to pick it up, but read on before you do.
Out of the box, it looked great. The unit was packaged like new, no visible
signs of use, tons of manuals (separate user, admin and setup guides), a one
year warrantee with overnight replacement and two-way shipping paid by
epson, ink cartridges included.
First hint of trouble was an insert that stated that different drivers than
the enclosed ones may need to be used depending on the type of ethernet card
installed. There was no hint of what type of card was actually installed,
but the connections of the card looked different than what the manual was
illustrating. The main difference was a 10base2 connection on the installed
card in addition to the 10BaseT one. I later discovered that this card is
not the latest shipping model, and I have to use older software from their
web site to control it.
But, the thing doesn't even work. Regardless of the software used, both on
mac and win, the printer is not seen when connected via the 10BT interface.
The hub it's connected to shows no activity on the link. Plus, there's a
button on the ethernet card that's supposed to print a status page including
the card's model and the MAC address, but that's not doing anything either.
My conclusion was that I have a faulty ethernet card, and the techie from
zones.com agreed, but he directed me to epson's tech support for further
help. Epson's tech support was closed on Friday for observance of Good
Friday, and on Saturday when I reached someone after a long hold (toll
call), I was told to call back Monday and talk to one of their networking
people. So this issue is still unresolved, and I really hope that Epson can
come up with a good solution.
On the plus side, the printer works fine when connected directly to my mac
via a serial cable. It's fast and prints very good text and good color with
no streaking even on draft mode. Much better than my HP deskwriter 660C.
So I'd like to keep the printer, but I need to get the ethernet interface
working. Without it, the printer is the equivalent of a regular 850 which
I've seen (refurb) for $80-$100 less.
I'll post an update after I talk to Epson again. I originally saw this as a
great opportunity to get a network printer at a reasonable price, but now
I'm thinking that it may not be worth it. Of course, YMMV.
--John
>
> Good Luck, I've had one of these for a while and would rate it as a POS
> (and that don't stand for point of sale!) Very poor Mac support and
> doesn't work well with Win98 either.
>
> Scot Loomis
> Production Systems Manager
> Hawaii Newspaper Agency
> sloomis@HonoluluAdvertiser.com
> (808) 525-7656
*** Windows-MacintoshOS Cooperation List ***
FAQ: http://www.darryl.com/winmacfaq/
Archive: http://www.darryl.com/winmac/
To unsubscribe, send mail to winmac-request@lists.best.com
with just the word "unsubscribe" in the body of the message.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29
: Mon Apr 24 2000 - 07:13:50 PDT