epson 3880 vs 4900?

[jnmoore]

Hi,

No I live in Vancouver Canada and B&H will not ship printers here.

John

[Wayne Fox]

I don't doubt that you can leave your 3800 off for 4 weeks and not have a clog.  I think that a lot depends on the temperature and humidity where your printer is located.

I do know that I let my 3880 sit for 2 weeks, and when I ran a nozzle check it needed a cleaning.

I do agree that the 3800 and 3880 seem to be much better than any other Epson I have every had.

I just think that for some of us, a preventative weekly nozzle check can help, and for the rest of us, it doesn't really hurt.

While certainly humidty can be a factor one would expect most of these printers to be in a decently temperature controlled environment.  The 3800/3880 does seem to be the exception even with humidity.  I had one in San Diego area, close enough to the coast to be a pretty humid environment, run a couple of them in Salt Lake area which is pretty dry, and have one also in St. George which is quite dry.  I see no difference.  I can go months without printing and rarely see a clog when I start them up no matter which environment.

Of course there are certainly exceptions to everything, but as mentioned these printers clog very rarely.

[Sven W]

Wayne,
Are all these your properties? 

/Sven

[Ken Bennett]

I think it depends on the temperature and humidity where the printer lives.  I was away and my 3880 sat idle (and powered on) for two weeks.  When I did a nozzle check today, there were a bunch of missing nozzles.  A single cleaning was enough to bring them back.

I think "powered on" is the problem here. The one time I had a nozzle clog on my 3800 was when I left it powered on for a couple of weeks without making a print. Took several cleaning cycles to fix. As long as I shut the power off, I can leave it for months without printing, no clogs, no problem. Great printer.

Keep in mind that the 3880 will NOT print borderless on 17 by 25.  The 4xxx series will not print borderless on any size of cut sheets.

This may be a reason to have both printers. One of my colleagues does, so she can print production stuff on roll paper, and small cards and cut sheets on the 3800.