On the subject of clogging, I've had a P5000 in my office since April 1st, and it is now mid-June. This is too short a time period for coming to firm conclusions, but I have found with judicious settings for maintenance management that I described in my review, it's actually pretty good, and I have purposely left it unused for up to eight or ten days to see what happens. Yes, it needs cleaning cycles, but the printer handles them internally and satisfactorily. If you have a preference for roll-holding with in-built cutting mechanism, then this is the preferred model for you.
The thing I'm a bit afraid of, is, the printer becoming another "pet" to care for :-)
Think tamagotchi... I don't have any problem with a weekly maintenance routine, like cleaning the wiper, flushpad, capping station, paper path.... But I don't want to make a total fuzz about printing. Nozzle check, clean, another nozzle check, another clean, printing 3 sheets, seeing a clog, doing another clean, another nozzle check, print some more, repeat. I know printers need some love and attention, but I don't want one that gives me more grey hairs than my actual pets do :-)
Maybe Epson printers are very reliable and trouble free. And maybe I have the wrong impression because I bought a second hand troublesome machine. But currently, after reading so much about them, they appear a bit fussy. If the printer heads were 500€ each and user replaceable, no problem. But with them being at least double the price and non user replaceable, I am just a bit in panic about a premature head failure.
On my current 4900:
I'm not 100% sure how to proceed from here. I now saw that the head can recover quite a bit, although I have never seen it print a perfect pattern (3 lines keep missing). That means I could replace the pump/selector unit and still have a dead head. Who knows.
What I need to test it is a new selector unit and - the bad thing - new ink cartridges. With around 85€ a pop, this isn't so cheap to find out.
If I interpret the service manual right, I need to do an ink eject on all inks, then change the selector unit with the dampers, and then do a new initial ink charge. That will burn through approximately 80-100ml of ink per cartridge, twice. At least 5 to 6 or the cartridges would need to be replaced for this. Muchos €€€ for just trying my luck. I COULD probably buy some cheap refill ink set for 300€ for this purpose (mainly, because I could continue using the carts with other, much higher quality Lyson inks for example), but if the nozzle pattern still doesn't improve after it, I have probably blown the money.
I guess I need to have another night of sleep over the decision. :-)