Dan,
No doubt about it, the people with the 44” model of this printer had more severe initial issues with it than the 24” 7570. But my impression from being on an email list discussing Epson printers is that most 9570 users are also experiencing trouble free printing, and outstanding image quality, now that firmware has been optimized and some “best practices” established for users. It took Epson a while to run things to ground, on top of their being slow to “get it” in the first instance.
Rand
The problems never went away for me. Some users report doing fine with them now, but my experience was that I still had issues. I was never able to print on thicker media with bi-directional printing. Canvas length was never exact. Paper skew errors and paper meandering errors were a constant annoyance. So after three years I switched to Canon, and got two Canon 4600s and I've had a Canon 2100 for over a year now.
After six months, I can safely say that the switch to Canon has made our lives easier. We have fewer misprints, fewer complaints from customers for little misprints we missed from head strikes, or ink on the back of prints, and we spend less time babysitting the printers. They're quieter too, and they use less ink (although it's a little more expensive). And with the dual roll adapter, we have two rolls on each machine. That alone has saved us so much time! And as a bonus, the Canon can take the Moab Entrada 290 75' rolls, and the Epson cannot. Since we go through a LOT of Moab Entrada, that's a couple of times a week we're not changing rolls on one machine. Less cardboard boxes, less paper changing, less waste. And soon I understand that Canson will have 65' rolls of the Canson Aquarelle 310, which we use a lot. Looking forward to those, and I know the Epson 9570 can't take those either.
For casual users, the Epson 9570 should be fine, and it does give great color. But I personally chose Canon, and it was a good choice for us.
