thanks for the feedback - I have no experience with Canon printers - however I will look into them
no but make sure you have enough daily workload for them to keep them busy. They seem to be quite prone to clogging on the 'I'm going to kill this thing' level if used intermittently.That's how I feel about my 4900, hate it due to the clogging issues. 25 feet away is a 3880 that never clogs. Best Epson printer I've ever owned.
That's how I feel about my 4900, hate it due to the clogging issues. 25 feet away is a 3880 that never clogs. Best Epson printer I've ever owned.
Someone come to Santa Fe with a truck, take this 4900 POS from me, it's yours!
Anytime after the first of the year. Seriously, I'd never attempt to sell it. It's kind of worthless and I'd be guilty doing so. I tried to give it to a school but no one wanted it and, considering what a huge PITA it is, that wouldn't work out. You can have it and the extra ink I have but my experience is, you literally have to run a nozzle check every day and run multiple cleanings too. It's a lemon. I've gone through a Maint Cart with only a few hunderd prints. It might be useful for spar parts or as a door stop. I'm happy to recycle it if I can.
On recommendation by someone from this forum, I tried the Harvey Head Cleaner (special version for 4900...send a note to them).I'll check it out, thanks!
Appears no Mac version of the Harvey Head Cleaner. I do have a Windows laptop I hate as much as this 4900, maybe a match made in heven? ;D
Have tried Peizio, Windex, blood sweat and tears, and have a few nozzles back on VM.
I had great success with the Harvey Head Cleaner. It kept the machine running for me for about 7 months.
The question I would put to Andrew, however, is whether his 3880 delivers visibly the same print quality as his 4900 when it works correctly. I am asking this question with no particular motive in mind - it is simply to know the answer, just in case he has done such comparisons.
Wow - I sure am glad I asked my question on this forum. What a nightmare it sounds like the 4900 has been for so many. I will steer clear of that and the 7900 which I gather has the same issues. I am not daily user nor do I want to be. I some times go months without using the 3800 and never seem to have issues with dropout/clogging - only now do I realize how fortunate I have been.I've had a 4900 for about 18 months, have sold a bunch of them, and no one has ever complained or felt it was a nightmare. Mine suffered from some channel losses early on, a call to Epson and a replaced pump cap assembly a few days later and not much issue since. My cost of ink consumption to maintain nozzles is no where near the price of the heads on the Canons when I used a 5000 and later a 6100. Don't be mislead, a canon is not clog free, you just don't know when they occur, but eventually clogs will consume the head(s) (which cost almost $500 each, and there are 2).
I will start exploring Canon printers. Thanks all!
IF only the 4900 acted like the 3880 a few feet away, in terms of clogging, I'd love it, not hate it. To me, the 4900 was a step backwards due to this issue. IF you don't need roll support, the 3880 is a winner.
I too think humidity is a big factor.
It IS very dry here in Santa Fe. But what gets me upset is the humility isn't any different in the room that houses both the 3880, which never clogs and the 4900 which always clogs. I must have spent 45 minutes yesterday screwing with the 4900 to make one print. I turned on the 3880, didn't even do a head check and the print (and final test) was prefect.
So as to your question about 3880 vs 4900 on a print, just my first observation. First, I used my Printer Test File which is in a pretty small gamut (ColorMatch RGB). I used the canned Epson profiles for both printers using Luster so the outcome would be more typical of the end user who may not be making their own profiles. I used RelCol for output. At viewing distance under a GTI booth, both 8x10s look very similar. I find the 4900 does a slightly nicer job rendering reds. Just a tad less yellow. Reds have always been somewhat of a problem color. This benefit of the 4900 has to be due to color mixing. It's not gamut. And when I view the two converted images in ColorThink, it shows the largetst deltaE values in greens! I don't really see that on the print and that kind of illustrates how one has to view the differences in the two in different ways. I can figure out the actual dE values of red but that's only through the profile using this one ColorThink test! Ideally I'd print a target from both, then evaluate the dE of the red's going all the way from source color space to output measurements. But IF I had to guess what the differences are in the red balls between the two prints, I'd say it's no more than a dE 2000 of 1.5-2, some in Lstar but the rest in Bstar. IOW, it ain't much difference.
I need to send a higher gamut image through both printers assuming today, that damn 4900 doesn't require another 30 minutes of head cleaning. It is interesting to see how the color mixing is different between the two, albeit small, when the image is in such a small gamut. It also reinforces my fondness for the 3880.
Well yes, what to say - the two technologies are quite different and if I got it right - the 4900 nozzles are half the size of those in the 3880. This may have something to do with it, but who knows.
I think your observations about the printing output are very interesting. In the final analysis, what matters most is not measurements from test charts but what people actually see and what differences they perceive using real-world photographs. For small dE differences, our eyes are not as capable at differentiating colour and tone values as our instruments are, even seeing the same file side by side from two different printers or applications.
I firmly believe that my 4900 clogs are due to humidity levels. Yesterday the humidity was 29% - about two hours north of Toronto. The humidifier I have is just a small Home Depot model. I need something better/bigger.