I have to agree with Jeff when he states
"Forums are made for people to complain or get help...so, people who have problems are predisposed to post to vent or resolve issues....you won't have a bunch of happy users who have zero problems come posting that they have no problems...I would venture a guess that the number of users who are having issues is a small subset of the installed user base."
I've always said People are more apt to complain then to commend. In other words just about any business will receive more phone calls as such "My printer isn't working, it's clogging and the damn thing is pissing black ink all over every print" rather than "My printer is the greatest, it makes the best prints that I have ever seen, I'm 100% satisfied with my purchase" We live in a complaining society, because of our expectations, when you spend a $1.00 on a product we expect it to work and when we spend $3,000.00 on a product, we expect it to work problem free for the rest of our lives. I believe there's a reason for this attitude, I truly believe that older, mechanical, non-electronic devices simply worked longer without problems. Run a Linux machine that just does email, it'll never die (software wise) Think about it this way, have you have had a corrupted negative? I get corrupted image files, but I keep the raws backed up, I never had to back up my negatives and still print from 30 year old negatives and slides.
I remember when "everybody" complained about the Epson 1280, it clogged, had color shift problems and naturally the prints faded. Well, my 1280 is now 8 years old, rarely clogs and if it does a simple cleaning works, I don't have the color shift problems and naturally some prints fade quicker than others. Unfortunately the pigment based printers can't print semigloss or gloss as well as the dye printers and receiving samples from the 7900 has convinced me that though we take 2 steps forward we take 1 step back.
Obviously a company like Epson who wants to stay in business a very long time has to make great products and deal with the problems that arise, but I wouldn't doubt if they had a 95% satisfaction rate with the 7900, but that 5% unsatisfied is probably a lot of people (I don't know what their sales are) I've had two problemed Mercedes Benz and one great one, I've owned 4 MACS and have had problems with all four, I've had more Epson printers than I care to count and haven't taken any in for service. With that being said, I have decided to wait a "little" while until I buy my 7900. The HP & Canon have their problems, so just pick the product you feel you have the best karma with, I'd say there's a great chance that you will receive a problem free unit from any of the 3 manufacturers.