Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)August 28, 2004 - I just finished installing this machine for my parents, who are running OS X 10.3.4 (Panther) on an aging iMac G3/400 DV. The entire process was simple and uneventful. My surprise came afterwards when I started playing with the CX4600. It's a very solid little All-In-One (AIO)!
After reading reviews of older Epson, HP and Canon AIO's, I was worried about several things. So far, the print quality is very good, on par with my own C84. In fact, the CX4600 uses the same 4 separate CMYK ink cartridges as the C84, which means you won't have any trouble finding them at stores. The paper transport is a little loud, but not too bad. Printing is very quick once it gets going, with a quiet side to side undulation.
The scan quality is excellent for most uses and you can freely choose your resolution. Hint: the installer will put Epson Smart Panel on your desktop, but I prefer Epson Scan which is also installed in your Applications folder. This is the same control panel you might have seen before in the Epson Twain driver. You can choose Full Auto mode, where it will magically figure out what you are scanning and adjust settings to match (even finding and scanning multiple photos into individual files), or Professional mode, where you choose everything. To be honest, I use the middle "Home" setting on my own system, since it offers that very cool auto-magic assist with the ability to override when necessary.
Using the Copy function is.. fun. I can't explain why, but it's nice to *not* configure, adjust, crop, fit, or launch anything. Just hit the Color or B&W Copy button and it goes to work immediately. I must be easily entertained. Again, the quality is excellent. Professional designers will likely own a scanner and photo printer, but they (I) might consider owning one of these for convenience too.
Memory Card slots are the bonus which puts the CX4600 over the top. I think I spent the most time looking up info on these, to see if they could be used with iPhoto in OS X. The web site doesn't say. The owner's manual doesn't say. But the answer is YES! Along with everything else, the installer drops CardMonitor and PhotoStarter onto your drive. The latter can be set up to launch iPhoto when you plug your camera's card into the CX4600. The 12 test photos I took imported perfectly afterwards (set PhotoStarter so that it does not auto-download the photos; let iPhoto handle it). The manual does mention this functionality for Windows, so I'm sure it works just as well.
Minor annoyances: The CX4600 can only be connected via USB, so there is no longer any excuse to make customers "choose" their own cable. It should be in the box. And the installer warns that it will take a long time. They're not kidding. But it's only because it runs several individual installers, which all require your admin password and often spend a very long time searching your drive for some reason. It would be less painful if you could do this in one pass and walk away while it works. However, that's all history. Once set up, it is a thing of beauty.
Don't be turned off by the photos of the CX4600. In person, it actually looks very classy. The top portion is covered in a metallic paint, making it appear less like a recycling bin and more like a stylish computer peripheral. It's also smaller and heavier than it appears. The software is fairly seamless and lets you dig deep if you know where to look. That's about as good as it can get. If you've been looking for an All-In-One, this new Epson is a great choice.
UPDATE
It is now November 2005. About one month ago, it was time for the 3rd round of cartridges in the CX4600. Not bad for one year of light printing. My parents hadn't reported any major problems beyond one color clogging every so often. I was not pleased how much the ink level dropped when doing a single head cleaning, but I've used Epson printers for years and I wasn't surprised either.
However, all is not well. If I hadn't been there and seen it myself I wouldn't believe this. Yellow was running low first, so we replaced that cartridge. Levels check showed a fresh, full yellow tank. But when we printed a test page, there was no yellow at all. So we started a cleaning cycle. This emptied the magenta tank, so we replaced that one. The resulting test page now had no yellow or magenta. The same occurred with cyan and black, so I thought maybe we had received some bad (or old) Epson cartridges from Amazon. The little PC board connectors did look slightly different, but the product numbers were the same. I could hear ink sloshing inside and everything else checked out. In fact, after cleaning, Epson's own software showed ink levels dropping. So there was communication happening.
We went out the next day and bought more new ink, again only true Epson brand. Same result. One day, the CX4600 was printing fine. As each new color ink was installed, it simply stopped working. The scanner and card reader still work. Epson's advice? 'Clean the print heads.'
We ended up getting a good deal on a replacement CX4600, since we had all this ink, the original was out of warranty, and it would likely cost more just to ship it somewhere to be 'looked at.' The new one works perfectly with the very same ink cartridges. I believe Epson changed the electronics in these ink cartridges at some point, which broke compatibility with first generation CX4600 units. I don't know if this was intentional or accidental, but I know this one was registered with Epson and we were not notified.
The CX4600 was a nice little AIO when it worked. It's too bad Epson has fallen so far into the disposable product model, that they feel no responsibility towards their customers.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Epson Stylus CX4600 Photo Printer, Copier, Scanner
The Epson Stylus CX4600 provides premium performance for more versatile home or business use. This hard-working combination scanner & photo printer offers remarkable photo-quality printing from memory cards -- no direct PC connection is required. It also offersfull-featured scanning and convenient color copying.True frame-ready BorderFree printing of 4 x 6, 8 x 10 and letter-sized photos Powerful Epson Smart Panel software offers more flexibility, for whatever you want to do -scan, fax, email and moreColor flatbed scanner with optical resolution of 600dpi; 48-bit color depth; TWAIN compatibleIndividual ink cartridge for more convenient changingUSB 2.0 compatibleWorks with Mac and PCBuilt-in card slots -CompactFlash Type I & II, Memory Stick and Memory Stick PRO, SmartMedia, Secure Digital(SD) Card, Mini SD(with adapter), MicroDrive and MultiMediaCard
Click here for more information about Epson Stylus CX4600 Photo Printer, Copier, Scanner
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