slightly older Epson printers

[Jayhawk]

In the quest to keep my photography budget under some type of control, I've noticed the Epson 2200 printers are now less expensive since the 2400 came out.  I've seen the 2200's priced around the same price (or less in one place) as the current 1800 model.  

My question is what are the biggest drawbacks to using a previous generation printer?  Does Epson still provide good support, and is there any risk of the ink cartridges becoming unavailable?  

Also, are these types of printers OK to use for printing documents too?  The primary use would obviously be for photography, but if it could replace my current monochrome document printer (for the few documents I print at home) that would be even better.

[DarkPenguin]

I think if you do not print on glossy paper there isn't a problem.  If you do there are some print issues.  The R1800 fixes them with glop and the 2400 uses better inks.

[boku]

I would not try using the 2200 for everyday office printing. It is slow and expensive to use (ink) for that purpose.

[Lisa Nikodym]

I'm still using my 2200 that I got shortly after it first came out (how long ago? something like three years, I'd guess), and it's still going strong and there's no problem whatsoever with ink availability.  (In general, Epson is excellent about continuing to provide ink cartridges almost forever.)  The issue DarkPenguin is talking about is that on glossy papers there can be a gloss differential between low-ink and high-ink areas which is avoided with later models, but if you print on matte papers or you frame prints behind glass then it's not an issue.  (Even if you print on glossy papers and don't put them behind glass, it's a relatively minor issue for many people.)

Awhile back I was thinking about replacing my 2200 with one of the newer Epsons, and did some test prints on each to compare.  The difference in print quality was quite small.  It was there if you looked very closely, but you had to really be searching carefully to see the difference.  I ended up deciding to hang on to my 2200 and wait until it breaks or until something yet better comes out.

Boku's comment is right on.  Photo-quality printers are *extremely* slow compared with office-type document printers, and the ink is much more expensive, so you *really* don't want to be using this type of photo printer for other things.  Save your current document printer...

Lisa

[Geoff Wittig]

I would expand a little on the above comments. If you print exclusively on matte or rag fine art papers using matte black ink, there is very little difference in print quality between the Epson 2400 and 2200. The d-max is almost identical and with decent profiles I think you would be very hard pressed to see any difference. On the other hand, using photo black ink on semigloss or luster type papers, the 2400 produces a significantly darker d-max than the 2200. This yields to my eye somewhat richer and more vivid color prints...and vastly superior black & white. Even ignoring the nifty black & white mode in Epson's printer driver, that very deep d-max greatly expands the dynamic range of monochrome prints. So if black & white is a significant part of your work, you will be much happier with the 2400. If you mostly do color printing on matte paper, the 2200 will work fine.