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Author Topic: Epson Printers and Snow Leopard  (Read 16367 times)

drralph

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Epson Printers and Snow Leopard
« on: September 12, 2009, 11:35:05 am »

My Epson 2200 is among the printers whose drivers were broken by the upgrade to Snow Leopard.  Epson's support site has been silent on the issue of new drivers, and has posted work arounds that do not work for many customers.

After trading emails with Epson this week, they finally confirmed the following:

"Drivers will become available through an Apple update sometime in the future.

Try calling us directly to see if we can get it going. Call us at 562-276-7296 Mon-Fri 6am-6pm (PT)."

I'm glad to hear that they apparently do not intend to abandon owners of the 2200.  In the mean while, I have a second boot drive running Leopard, and am in the process of installing my imaging software on that drive.   I plan to reboot when I do printing jobs.  I figure that is a lot easier than trying to revert to Leopard on my main drive.

francois

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« Reply #1 on: September 12, 2009, 12:09:22 pm »

Quote from: drralph

In the mean while, I have a second boot drive running Leopard, and am in the process of installing my imaging software on that drive.   I plan to reboot when I do printing jobs.  I figure that is a lot easier than trying to revert to Leopard on my main drive.
Keep your Leopard bootable drive safe! When Epson releases the new Snow Leopard compatible drivers, test then thoroughly before erasing/updating that drive.
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Francois

ppmax

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« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2009, 09:13:23 am »

Has anyone heard anything else about this? Any word on when the update will be released?

thx
PP
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Ralph Eisenberg

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« Reply #3 on: September 21, 2009, 10:35:08 am »

On my return to Paris recently, after having been away from the city and internet for several weeks, I installed 10.6 and 10.6.1 and immediately observed problems printing to my Epson 3800. Fortunately I noticed the article by Mark Dubovoy on this site that provided workarounds that work while awaiting updated drivers (should they be provided for this printer). I wanted to express my grateful thanks after this brief visit to color-management hell, which I had thought was a thing of the past.
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Ralph

hokuahi

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« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2009, 02:19:58 am »


From Epson support regarding the 3800 driver:  

Thank you for taking the time to contact Epson. It is my pleasure to respond to your inquiry.

The 6.11 driver for Leopard works fine with Snow Leopard. Updated drivers for Snow Leopard are expected sometime around November 2009.
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DSchiff

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« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2009, 11:48:00 am »

I would guess my problem with my Epson 4000 is about the same as the
2200.  I cannot get my 4000 to print right and have followed all the advice
Epson has on their website, including uninstalling and then installing drivers.
The printer seems  like it ignores all my profiles and prints everything very
very dark.   Anybody have any success getting their 4000 going?
Thanks


Quote from: drralph
My Epson 2200 is among the printers whose drivers were broken by the upgrade to Snow Leopard.  Epson's support site has been silent on the issue of new drivers, and has posted work arounds that do not work for many customers.

After trading emails with Epson this week, they finally confirmed the following:

"Drivers will become available through an Apple update sometime in the future.

Try calling us directly to see if we can get it going. Call us at 562-276-7296 Mon-Fri 6am-6pm (PT)."

I'm glad to hear that they apparently do not intend to abandon owners of the 2200.  In the mean while, I have a second boot drive running Leopard, and am in the process of installing my imaging software on that drive.   I plan to reboot when I do printing jobs.  I figure that is a lot easier than trying to revert to Leopard on my main drive.
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rkissinger

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Epson Printers and Snow Leopard
« Reply #6 on: October 26, 2009, 09:53:22 am »

Same problem here!

I updated my system with SnowLeopard at first only to see, that the prints from my Epson 4000 were too dark and mushy. After a few wasted prints and a bit of web browsing I learned that it seems to be a driver problem. Some site suggested trying a clean install of SnowLeopard instead of an upgrade. I tried that as well, but the results were the same.

Too bad though, since SnowLeopard seems to make the system in general and of course Lightroom running a lot faster on my MBPro.

I was planning to get a new iMac or MacPro at this time, but since they are coming with SnowLeopard as well, I will just wait and see if the printing issues are resolved. If not, I might have to direct my money to a new printer working properly on todays operating systems instead of to a new Mac....   But if that will be the case, the money will definitely not go to Epson and this would be a first for me since the very first Epson Photo Printer hit the market....  

Anyone has news regarding the issues?

Regards, René


Quote from: DSchiff
I would guess my problem with my Epson 4000 is about the same as the
2200.  I cannot get my 4000 to print right and have followed all the advice
Epson has on their website, including uninstalling and then installing drivers.
The printer seems  like it ignores all my profiles and prints everything very
very dark.   Anybody have any success getting their 4000 going?
Thanks
« Last Edit: October 26, 2009, 10:01:07 am by rkissinger »
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drralph

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Epson Printers and Snow Leopard
« Reply #7 on: November 28, 2009, 08:53:04 am »

Quote from: rkissinger
Same problem here!

Anyone has news regarding the issues?

Regards, René

Still no updated drivers on the Epson website.  I think our 2200 and 4000 printers have been "bricked."  Anybody need a new doorstop?  This is extremely upsetting, and we as customers are almost powerless.  I have an HP laser printer from 1989 that still runs perfectly on my network.  It is unconscionable to render a perfectly functioning 7 year old printer useless.

Doyle Yoder

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« Reply #8 on: November 28, 2009, 01:19:02 pm »

Quote from: drralph
Still no updated drivers on the Epson website.  I think our 2200 and 4000 printers have been "bricked."  Anybody need a new doorstop?  This is extremely upsetting, and we as customers are almost powerless.  I have an HP laser printer from 1989 that still runs perfectly on my network.  It is unconscionable to render a perfectly functioning 7 year old printer useless.

Don't forget you can always use the ColorSync Utility workaround. It is not that difficult unless you're using lots of different papers.

Doyle
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Wayne Fox

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« Reply #9 on: November 28, 2009, 02:28:47 pm »

Quote from: drralph
Still no updated drivers on the Epson website.  I think our 2200 and 4000 printers have been "bricked."  Anybody need a new doorstop?  This is extremely upsetting, and we as customers are almost powerless.  I have an HP laser printer from 1989 that still runs perfectly on my network.  It is unconscionable to render a perfectly functioning 7 year old printer useless.


Epson released new 2200 drivers on 11/25/09 (driver 8.1.2), which states compatibility for 10.6.  You may also need to install the common updater which also lists 10.6, although it was released quite some time ago so most have probably already installed this.

As far as rendering a printer useless, not sure I agree.  First it isn't useless, you can buy a cheap older Mac and print from that.  We have 3 4000's running, I think they're all still on 10.2 machines.  I'm not sure at what point Epson should quit supporting older hardware, but the 2200 and the 4000 both to me are in that category.

that being said, they actually instruct you to download the 10.6 driver for the 4000 if you follow their Snow Leopard compatibility links, yet when you get to the download page it doesn't exist.  this may be an indication they are working on it.  
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kinserfr

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« Reply #10 on: November 29, 2009, 09:50:59 am »

Quote from: Wayne Fox
Epson released new 2200 drivers on 11/25/09 (driver 8.1.2), which states compatibility for 10.6.  You may also need to install the common updater which also lists 10.6, although it was released quite some time ago so most have probably already installed this.

As far as rendering a printer useless, not sure I agree.  First it isn't useless, you can buy a cheap older Mac and print from that.  We have 3 4000's running, I think they're all still on 10.2 machines.  I'm not sure at what point Epson should quit supporting older hardware, but the 2200 and the 4000 both to me are in that category.

that being said, they actually instruct you to download the 10.6 driver for the 4000 if you follow their Snow Leopard compatibility links, yet when you get to the download page it doesn't exist.  this may be an indication they are working on it.


Wayne, thanks for the update on this.  The drivers appear to work fine though I had some difficulty installing it.  I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, but when I opened the DMG and began the installation, the modal dialog that requests the user's admin password to install the drivers would not stay focused...strange.  Anyway, I kept one finger on the keyboard and forced focus with the mouse by clicking the dialog and then immediately typing a character. Once a character was typed, the dialog would remain focused.  I have never had that happen before when installing software from any vendor.

The one thing that irks me with this whole affair is that I do believe that Epson should have updated their drivers for this printer at the time Snow Leopard was released.  In fact, I had received an e-mail from Epson tech. support on Nov. 18 that they had no plans to update the drivers for the 2200 and that I should use the 10.4 driver under Rosetta (which did not work for me).  Now they release an update only a week later.  As a software developer myself, I understand what a monster it can be to have to update drivers for so many printers. I think that had Epson done the analysis based on continuing sales of consumables that they would have seen that the 2200 is still a popular printer.  Instead, they update the drivers based on negative consumer feed back, which is never a good thing.

On a side note, I have since ordered an Epson 4880, making the jump into their professional class printer line with the assumption that their support will never waiver for their professional class of printers, though some older 4000, 7000, 9000 class owners may disagree.  I think that Epson's policy should be that they will always provide support for all of their professional class printers, regardless.  They should also provide support for consumer models that continue to meet a certain level of consumable sales.  When sales of consumables for a printer fall below a defined threshold, then registered customers should be notified and be offered incentives to purchase new printers models.  Given the nature of the business model for the inkjet market, this seems to make sense to me.

Regards
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dchew

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« Reply #11 on: November 30, 2009, 07:02:11 am »

Quote from: Wayne Fox
Epson released new 2200 drivers on 11/25/09 (driver 8.1.2), which states compatibility for 10.6.  You may also need to install the common updater which also lists 10.6, although it was released quite some time ago so most have probably already installed this.

Thanks Wayne, I can now print! Also successfully printed a test target and profile.


Quote from: kinserfr
I think that Epson's policy should be that they will always provide support for all of their professional class printers, regardless.  They should also provide support for consumer models that continue to meet a certain level of consumable sales.  When sales of consumables for a printer fall below a defined threshold, then registered customers should be notified and be offered incentives to purchase new printers models.  Given the nature of the business model for the inkjet market, this seems to make sense to me.

Ray,  I too am buying a new Epson (in Dec).  While I agree they should have done all this updating associated with Snow Leopard sooner, I'm not sure the priority can be established solely on consumable sales, especially with a printer like the 2200.  Some people (like my wife) use this printer to print, um..., text.  She could print all day from her windows machine.  I'm not sure what the percentage of users is that just go right on using this printer without updating the driver, but it is probably a decent percentage. Printers this long in the tooth are sometimes handed down to folks who happily use 2nd or 3rd generation printers, computers and/or operating systems, so my guess is there are many users who haven't even blinked yet and keep buying cartridges.  In fact, I'm guessing there are few people like me who 1) have and rely on a relatively old 2200, 2) Have updated Mac OS, and 3) Color manage.  

BTW, I had the same install issue you did; the window wouldn't stay active.

Dave
« Last Edit: November 30, 2009, 07:03:36 am by dchew »
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EricC

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« Reply #12 on: November 30, 2009, 10:36:42 am »

Is there any news from Epson on updated drivers for the 3800?
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francois

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« Reply #13 on: November 30, 2009, 10:44:30 am »

Quote from: EricC
Is there any news from Epson on updated drivers for the 3800?
Epson Europe still lists version 6.57 (May 2009) as the most recent…
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Francois

framah

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« Reply #14 on: November 30, 2009, 11:01:57 am »

Speaking of drivers... has anyone updated to Snow Leopard and having any problems with a 9900 running on it?

It looks like Epson had an updated driver for it but I'm not sure.

Thought I'd ask here.
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kinserfr

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« Reply #15 on: November 30, 2009, 08:07:44 pm »

Quote from: dchew
Thanks Wayne, I can now print! Also successfully printed a test target and profile.

Ray,  I too am buying a new Epson (in Dec).  While I agree they should have done all this updating associated with Snow Leopard sooner, I'm not sure the priority can be established solely on consumable sales, especially with a printer like the 2200.  Some people (like my wife) use this printer to print, um..., text.  She could print all day from her windows machine.  I'm not sure what the percentage of users is that just go right on using this printer without updating the driver, but it is probably a decent percentage. Printers this long in the tooth are sometimes handed down to folks who happily use 2nd or 3rd generation printers, computers and/or operating systems, so my guess is there are many users who haven't even blinked yet and keep buying cartridges.  In fact, I'm guessing there are few people like me who 1) have and rely on a relatively old 2200, 2) Have updated Mac OS, and 3) Color manage.  

BTW, I had the same install issue you did; the window wouldn't stay active.

Dave

My point is that if Epson finds it profitable enough to produce consumables for a printer then they should also support the printer across all of the platforms they originally released it for.  They shouldn't be able to "cherry pick" their support offerings for any reason if they still manufacture consumables for it.  I shall rant no further <grin>.
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Wayne Fox

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« Reply #16 on: December 01, 2009, 03:54:07 am »

Quote from: EricC
Is there any news from Epson on updated drivers for the 3800?


My 3800 is printing just fine from Snow Leopard.
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francois

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« Reply #17 on: December 01, 2009, 04:56:51 am »

Quote from: Wayne Fox
My 3800 is printing just fine from Snow Leopard.
I use the Epson driver version 6.57 and printing is working fine for me too.
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Francois

BernardLanguillier

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« Reply #18 on: December 01, 2009, 06:36:08 am »

Quote from: framah
Speaking of drivers... has anyone updated to Snow Leopard and having any problems with a 9900 running on it?

No problem here.

I installed the latest driever a few months ago and had to register the printer once more in the preferences, but other than that everything works fine.

Cheers,
Bernard

Ralph Eisenberg

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« Reply #19 on: December 02, 2009, 03:37:52 am »

Quote from: francois
I use the Epson driver version 6.57 and printing is working fine for me too.



Same here.
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Ralph
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