A New Printer

I print something maybe once a week or every other week. Usually it's a ticket to an event or a coupon or a map from Google Maps (just as a backup to a Nav System or an iPhone) or the occasional envelope. I got my printer about the same time I started this blog (I couldn't print at work anymore), a Canon PIXMA iP4000. I had it connected to an AirPort Express (and more recently to my Time Capsule) to put it on the Network. My Macs rarely had a problem printing to it and it worked well. It's really a photo printer, but I think I've printed a photo just once.

"Worked" is unfortunately the operative word. It died. A few weeks ago I got an error and the normally green power light blinked 5 amber blinks. That is a Print Head problem. I looked up how to clean it and did and it didn't help and then after having it off for a couple days it came back to life. For about a month. Now dead I replaced it.

Duplex printing was a firm requirement and I wanted to be able to handle the occasional envelope. That turned out to be a problem for many printers. To print one envelope I didn't want to have to remove the paper cassette, remove all the paper, put in an envelope and realign the guides and then have to put the paper back when done. My Canon had a rear feed that worked great, most printers today don't have one and it's not easy to figure out which ones do. Many have a second paper cassette but most of those work only for photo paper or are full sized making the printer more suitable for an office.

I ended up with the pick from The Wirecutter, the Epson WF-3520. I didn't care much about getting an all-in-one with copy, scan and fax features, but they're nice to have. I looked at models from Canon, Epson, HP and Brother. They all have too many models with just one differentiating feature, so you have to figure out which one is exactly right and they don't just list them as this is the same as the previous model but with duplex and this is the same as the previous but with a second tray, etc.. The brother was smaller but I read about jamming problems. The Canons didn't have a rear feed for envelopes. The HPs weren't quite right either. I should have just trusted The Wirecutter to begin with (they're like eight for eight so far for me).

Staples had it for the same $120 that Amazon did and I figured if there were issues it would be easier to return it to. I went yesterday but they were out of stock, but they ordered it for me and it was delivered to my house today. They sent me a form I could printer out and leave at the door signed allowing them to leave it without a signature. I of course couldn't print this out but wrote it out and it worked fine.

Install was simple. It's wifi enabled and I entered the password on the keypad. My 802.11n network is 5GHz only and this only supports 2.4GHz (another thing that's practically impossible to find out about a printer before buying it) so it's on my less frequently used G network. My iMac could see it no problem. It's also got AirPrint and I managed to print from Safari on my iPhone. I doubt I'll ever want to do that again, but it's kinda nice.

I had it check for firmware upgrades and it said there were none. I set up my print queues easily enough and some print defaults to enable duplex. In OS X's Contacts app I tried printing an envelope. The rear feed worked easily enough but I couldn't get the addresses to appear in the right spots on the envelope. I tried a ton of different settings and it finally worked, though I'm putting the envelope in backwards compared to what the instructions say.

I made a copy, that worked fine. I could open a scanner app from the computer. There's one in the print queue on a Scan tab and the Image Capture app can do it too. On the printer itself you can choose Scan to PC but I couldn't see the computer in the list on the printer, even though the computer could see the printer. The ultimate fix was installing apps and new firmware from the Epson Support Site. Yes it said my firmware was up-to-date, but there was a newer one to install. For the record I'm using Driver 9.04 and Firmware from 3/11/14. Now when I scan from the printer to the PC my iMac (running OS X 10.8) appears in the printer's list of machines it can see.

I also went through manual print head alignment which I learned to do when my Canon started having problems. The Epson's process had fewer steps and I made some changes from the defaults.

The other tip I have is to be sure to setup defaults in the Printer dialog boxes on the mac for various ways you print. I have three, Duplex, Single, and Envelope. It sets the paper type, size, location (cassette or feed), etc. You set them in the Presets drop down in the Printer dialog (another thing on the mac that's not quite obvious). Basically you pick all the settings you want, then in presets you can choose "Save current settings as preset...". There seem to be some similar things to set in the EPSON Scan Settings.app for things like where to put the the scanned file, what to name it and what formats to use. It mostly defaulted to putting jpg's in my Pictures folder where I never would have found them. Now they're pdf's that will appear on my desktop.

The manual (I downloaded the pdf) is 325 pages of mostly useless stuff. First it's both Windows and Mac and very mostly Windows. Second it's filled with helpful instructions like this, "To print multiple pages on one sheet of paper, select the number of pages in the Pages per Sheet pop-up menu." and "Long-Edge binding: Orients double-sided printed pages to be bound on the long edge of the paper."

And now I've printed out my ticket for tomorrows Red Sox game :)