Looking for a bargain. Check out these ten printers . . . all priced under $100. We can’t offer you the printers, but we can take care of any printer cartridge needs you have.

Brother MFC-3360C – The Brother MFC-3360C does decent quality text and graphics, but anyone printing a large volume of photos won’t be happy with the extremely slow output speed. If you’re set on buying a multifunction printer, put your $90 toward a more capable device, like the Canon Pixma MX330.

Brother DCP 165C – The counterintuitive setup, bland design, deplorable print quality, and crawling output speeds earns this printer a double thumbs down. Spend $30 more and you can get the Canon Pixma MX330, an all-in-one printer that adds a fax machine on top of the copy, scan, and print features.

Epson Stylus NX515 – The Epson Stylus NX515 is a capable machine that will improve the efficiency of any office or work-at-home setup. Not only is it a lightning-fast all-in-one, but it also has a broader range of features than most other $150 AIOs. As long as you don’t need a full creative software suite, the Epson Stylus NX515 will make a dependable sidekick to your computer.

HP Deskjet D2660 Printer – HP’s basic Deskjet D2660 inkjet has a fold-up paper tray and a unique paper corral that make it easy to store away. We noticed several flaws in the output quality, but if you don’t expect too much in terms of photo output, this $50 inkjet will make an excellent at-home printer for intermittent use.

HP Officejet 6000 – We like the simplicity of the HP Officejet 6000 single-function inkjet printer. The print quality meets HP’s high standards, and it outputs full color photos at an impressive rate, but its lack of an LCD screen takes some getting used to. Nevertheless, the HP Officjet 6000 performed well and earns our recommendation as a great single-function printer.

Canon Pixma MX330 – The HP Photosmart C6380 is a good fit for beginning photographers who want more than just a simple printer. Its six-ink cartridge bay, and scanning and copying capabilities extend its versatility, and while the output quality suffers a few missteps, the C6380 remains a worthwhile deal for the money.

HP Officejet J4680 – The HP Officejet J4680 offers more features at a cheaper price than most of its competitors, and small offices and home professionals will appreciate its print quality as well. Unfortunately, its negatives far outweigh the positives: your office productivity will take a major hit because of sluggish output speeds and faulty paper handling. For a better rounded all-in-one printer, we recommend picking up the Lexmark x7675 Pro or investing an extra $90 in the HP Officejet J6480.

Dell All-in-One Wireless Printer V305w – The Dell V305w is cosmetically appealing and inexpensive, but the output quality needs significant improvement, and the cost to maintain the printer is much higher than the industry standard. We recommend checking out the competition for a printer that will give you longer-lasting inks, cheaper replacement cartridges, and more acceptable photo-quality prints.

Canon Selphy CP770 – The Canon Selphy CP770 is a neat, little dye-sublimation printer that includes a bucket for easy travel, but the wireless accessories aren’t included. If you’re shopping for a convenient travel-friendly printer, check out the Canon Selphy CP760 that offers the exact same technology with a similar style for a better price.

Canon Selphy CP760 – The Canon Selphy CP760 takes the pain out of printing photos with its plug-and-play design and straightforward usability, and the $100 price tag makes it an excellent companion printer for quick prints in the home.

*Review summary compliments of CNET.com

This isn’t exactly breaking news, but more of a general update to the people who come here looking for news about when they can get their benefits from Epson. Recently, Epson filed an appeal challenging the settlement. This is what the official settlement site says:

Appeals have been filed challenging the Judgment and order granting final approval of the Settlement and application for attorneys’ fees. As a result, the distribution of Settlement benefits is on hold until the appeals process is completed.

Originally, they did note that the benefits would not be paid until the Court had given final approval and all appeals had been “expired”, so this isn’t a total surprise. This is somewhat interesting since Epson originally settled this back in April of 2006, and now they are appealing it, but basically this is always what happens with these types of cases. Maybe it has something to do with lawyer’s fees, maybe one person isn’t happy about it, I don’t know. All this stuff goes on behind the scenes, so unfortunately at this moment, all everyone can do is continue to wait.

A number of people have been asking how to redeem their benefits online at the Epson store. Apparently no one is really having much luck using their code online, and there may be a reason why. Ron, a commenter, left this note in the original post about the settlement:

I got this back from Epson about the e-store code:

Per this website, the settlement benefits are not distributed until AFTER the court considers final approval on the settlement. The settlement benefits will be available no sooner than the late fall of 2006. Thus, any Epson Store codes will not be activated until after the final settlement

Guess we’ll have to wait.

The court will not be making a final decision as to whether or not the settlement is fair until August 15, 2006. On the official site for the settlement, this is one of the frequently asked questions:

When can I expect to receive my benefits?

Benefits will be available after the Court has given final approval and all appeals have expired.

So it does seem like the discount will not work until sometime after August 15th. Another commenter pointed out that on the official settlement site, there is a page where you can sign up to receive notification when your E-Store code is active or the other benefits or ready. You can receive notification via email or a postcard. You can sign up for that reminder at this page.

The Stylus CX7800 is a relatively new printer that specializes in scanning photographs and old negatives. So, it is geared towards those who have old photo collections (slides, negatives, transparencies) that they want to preserve or reproduce. Sounds pretty good, since for all the home photo printers and all-in-one machines there are these days, there aren’t a ton that are good for scanning photos and negatives. Well, the CX7800 was just reviewed today by CNET and they definitely were not impressed. Their summary was this:

The Epson CX7800 all-in-one is remarkably easy to use. Too bad its photo printing is merely average and its print speeds are ridiculously slow.

They only gave this printer a 6.3 rating. Now sometimes you have to take that number with a grain of salt, but so far the only user ratings for it have amounted to an average of 5.8. When both ratings are that low, you know something isn’t right. Their main problem with the CX7800 was the print quality and speed, two things that some might consider reasonably important as far as inkjet printers go. The scanning features seem to work okay, but have a great scanned copy of your picture might not be enough to satisfy most people.

If any of our readers owns an Epson Stylus CX7800, we would like to hear some comments from you. Prove this CNET review wrong. Or, just jump on the bandwagon and tell everyone to avoid this printer.

Epson Stylus CX7800 Editor’s Review [CNET]

Buy this printer Buy Epson Stylus CX7800 ink cartridges

A month ago, we wrote about how Epson had settled a couple of class action lawsuits over the amount of ink left in their cartridges. Technically if you printer was already registered with Epson, you should have automatically received your credit in the mail. Also, you can still register you printer up until November 13th, 2006 and automatically receive the credit. The June 22nd deadline only applies if you never registered your printer with Epson and don’t want to or else you don’t want the $45 credit and you want one of the other benefits.

So far, based on what we have read on a few different sites, it doesn’t seem like too many people have run into any big problems yet. Hopefully the process is going smoothly for most people. If anybody has had any experiences with this claims process, good or bad, leave us a comment and let us know.

http://www.epsonsettlement.com/

Update – You can visit this page on the official settlement site to be automatically notified when your discount/benefits will become available.

If you have an Epson inkjet printer and have ever received an error message when you try to print that say “there was a problem printing to the port. Check to be sure your printer is configured to use a valid port”, then check out this Q & A to see if any of these solutions help you.

With most error messages, your first step should be to check the connections of the printer, and then to cycle the printer to see if the message gets cleared.

Epson will give out a $45 credit to consumers to settle class-action lawsuits filed against them in California, Texas and New York. The lawsuits argued that a “substantial” amount of ink remained in Epson inkjet cartridges at the time that the printer indicated the cartridge was empty. The settlement applies to anyone who purchased an Epson inkjet printer between April 8, 1999 and May 8, 2006. The $45 credit is for use at Epson’s online store, and can be used on printers, inkjet cartridges or any other products. Also, instead of the $45 credit consumers can choose to receive a $25 check from Epson and a $20 credit for their store, or else a 25% discount ($100 is the max discount) off products at the Epson store.

Now in our opinion, this settlement is kind of lousy. This has always been a big complaint of our customers who use Epson printers and they find it pretty annoying that their printer will basically stop working because it says a cartridge is empty, even though it usually isn’t. Under the terms of the settlement, Epson admits no wrongdoing and will not change any of their technology. They will change their packaging to note that “empty” cartridges are going to still have some ink in them. So the lawyers get their big cut, Epson can say they did nothing wrong, and consumers are left with a credit from a company they may never want to buy from again. It could even prove to be a gain for Epson, if consumers use the $45 credit and then spend additional money or if they elect to take the 25% discount. What is supposed to be a penalty for them could turn into a flood of traffic for their online store.

On a positive note, the settlement is pretty large and the process to claim it does not seem that difficult. This is not the usual class-action settlement where you have to fill out five forms to get your $2 share of the loot. If you registered your printer with Epson, then you will automatically receive the credit. If you haven’t, you can go to http://www.epsonsettlement.com/ and find the claim form there.

The last day to send in a claim form is June 22, 2006.

Class Counsel and Epson America Announce Class Action Settlement [Press Release]

Update 5/30 – Ron, one of our commenters, left this note: “I got this back from Epson about the e-store code: Per this website, the settlement benefits are not distributed until AFTER the court considers final approval on the settlement. The settlement benefits will be available no sooner than the late fall of 2006. Thus, any Epson Store codes will not be activated until after the final settlement.”

This would explain why a lot of people have been wondering about actually using their benefits at the Epson store.

Update 6/1 – Another commenter, Jerry, pointed out this link: E-Store Code Notification. So if you sign up, you will be automatically notified via email or postcard that your code/benefits are ready.

Update 9/18 – The latest news on this case is that the settlement was officially accepted by the Court back on August 15th, so this should mean that everyone’s E-Store codes are valid. If you are still having trouble, you can always try calling 1-877-506-4031, which was a number set up for all class members. There is a pretty long recording that you have to listen to at first, but you could always try hitting 0 to see if an operator appears.

Update 1/22 – http://www.pacificink.com/blog/2007/01/22/epson-settlement-update-2/

Here is a review on the Epson Stylus Photo R340, an updated version of the R320, which came out at the end of 2004. The R340 features a six-color ink system, the ability to print on CDs or DVDs, a 2.4″ LCD screen and the ability to print directly from your camera. This reviewer had given the R320 a look last year, and he believes that the R340 is a pretty solid upgrade, although not worth it if you currently own the R320.

I also found the overall operation of the R340 to be much more quiet in its operation. As the print head glides along, you get a feeling that this printer is a lot tighter in its operation.

So while the printing speed specifications really don’t reflect much of a speed increase, you really do get a feeling that everything is happening much more quickly.

I guess it’s just a quality thing. I’ve seen the same thing with cars. Sometimes it’s just that the newer models only look and feel better but the specifications are actually the same.

He brings up an interesting point – does this printer really have improved performance over the model it replaced, or is it just perception? New printer models are constantly being released, but are they all really better than their predecessors? Probably not. Printer technology has improved greatly over the last few years, but these days it doesn’t improve fast enough to where you are going to see major differences with every new model. There might be a new or improved feature (like the LCD in this case), but what really matters the most is print quality/speed, and that is going to change much unless you are upgrading from a printer that is a couple years old.

Here is a comparison of the two models:

You don’t have to stare at them too long to realize that the actual performance of the machine is exactly the same. Also, since they use the same ink cartridges, it is a safe bet to say that the results of each machine will be the same. Just from looking at the two machines, the R340 is an improved design and looks much better than the R320, but again, not something that would justifying replacing your old machine.

Epson’s newest printer is its best so far [Seattle Times]

Buy this printer Buy Epson Photo Stylus R340 ink cartridges

Epson announced on Monday that they expect their printer shipments to decline by about 10% over the next year. The reduction is due to their decision to eliminate some of their “low-end” non-multifunction models. These models are less profitable for Epson, so they decided to focus on the more expensive and lucrative all-in-one printers. They also plan to save money by using more of the same parts in multiple machines.

Epson is currently the number two printer manufacturer in the world, trailing HP. According to the article, they currently have about a 20% share of the market compared to HP’s 35% share. Recently Epson has been losing ground in Europe to Canon and HP, and this decision to scale back their shipments will likely cause them to slip a little in the U.S. market as well.

Focusing more on high-end models would make Epson more similar to Canon, in that Canon does not have a huge number of models on the market and few of them are cheap entry level machines. They tend to limit their supply and focus on either photo or multifunction machines. These days, you won’t really find a simple “low-end” Canon inkjet printer that doesn’t really do anything but print, but you can find a couple from Epson like the Stylus C88 or the Stylus C66. HP has always been the leader in inexpensive entry level inkjets, and with Dell now in that market as well, it probably just doesn’t make much sense for Epson to be there too. As consumers get more serious about home printing, whether for photos or for their small businesses, there will probably be fewer and fewer of this type of machine and in the end Epson will not be missing out on much.

Seiko Epson Expects Inkjet Printer Shipments to Fall [Bloomberg]

Epson has developed a print head that uses organic light-emitting diodes as the source of light. What the heck does that mean? Well if you want, you can read up on OLED over at Wikipedia, but in simple terms it is a type of technology similar to LED (light-emitting diode). Up until now, it had seen limited use in some displays like flat panel monitors or TVs. It is important because it is an improvement over the current LED technology. Epson would use it to produce smaller print heads that have brighter and more precise beams than their current laser printers feature. The article notes that it would allow them to make smaller laser printers and copiers which would be faster and print at a higher resolution.

Printers get a glimpse of OLED tech [CNET]