Epson Artisan 800; An Eligent Machine

First impressions:

Okay, so I get the Epson Artisan 800 in the mail. I open the box not knowing exactly what to expect. Except that I have always been partial to Epson for color printing. Their six color process has long been top notch. In any case, I open it up and the first thing I notice is that this is a beautiful peace of machinery. It has this sleek black reflective finish and a HUGE touch screen (7.8/3.5-inch). Also it's wireless, which means I don't have to set it up next to my router on my already cluttered desk, I can put it in any room I want. And it looks so good you might want to show it off, say by putting it in your living room. So, at this point I am already sold. But of course there is much more. The Artisan 800 is a five in one. That means it can Print, Copy, Scan, Fax and print Ultra HD Photos. Now usually I am skeptical about printers that claim they can do it all but, I will wait and see.

• 5 in 1 with Wi-Fi: Print / Copy / Scan / Fax / Ultra HD Photo
• Up to 38 ppm, photos in as fast as 10 sec¹
• Built-in fax and Automatic Document Feeder
• Wi-Fi and Ethernet networking
• 7.8-inch touch panel, 3.5-inch LCD
• Professional quality CD/DVD printing
• Two-sided printing saves paper
• Create coloring books and personal note paper
• Two-year limited warranty with registration¹
• Ultra Hi-Definition photos last 4x longer than photo lab prints
• Two paper trays always ready to print photos and documents

So the installation:

I bust out the quick install guide. Read through the seven plus steps and I get to work. I have to say, although it was not difficult, the Artisan was a bit of an annoying install for two reasons. One, I had to plug the thing in to my router for the install. Kind of a drag because I was so psyched about the WiFi. Second the install app. launched a whole lot of separate installers that required my password each time. None of this was a big deal but by the time I setup the printer and installed the printer drivers on both of my computers it took about 30min - 1hour (if you count some stupid mistakes I made). Okay, I know it's not a big deal but I'm just saying.

Now for the fun:

Well, we all know how good Epson prints normally look and the Artisan 800 is no exception. Stunning. Just stunning. So I will skip to the stuff I want to talk about. It's got two paper trays. This way you can keep your 8.5"/11" and 5"/7" ready to go. Cool. But what I was not expecting was the professional quality CD/DVD printing. This is going to come in real handy. No more messing with those stupid stickers. I always mess those up. Also, I haven't checked this out yet but apparently you can do two-sided printing. I will take Epson's word on that. 

I knew as soon as I saw the PC-free printing that my wife was going to love it. You just connect your camera via USB or slam the memory card right into the Artisan 800. Then browse your photos, crop, rotate and enlarge all on the huge color display and print away. It doesn't get any easier then that. It just like using the kiosk at the drug store. Here are all the PC-free Print Features available to the Artisan 800: 

Auto photo correction, select and print photos, crop, rotate and enlarge, view and print-by-date, print your own picture packages, print passport and photo ID, select multiple photos to print on a single page, print your own school papers, college-ruled, wideruled and graph papers. Make personalized note paper using your own photos, create coloring book pages using your photos, photo index sheet, photo greeting cards and print movie clips. 

Something else I liked was the intuitive interface. There is very little you have to learn. The touch screen makes it a very easy and all around fun experience. You want to scan- push scan, you want to fax- push fax, etc... 

That leaves scan, fax and copy. Well I don't fax (it's so twentieth century) so you will have to discover that on your own. But I do scan & copy. The scan/copy process is frailly standard, but Epson has given us a number of cool features to play with. Of course you can scan through the normal TWAIN process. Cool. But they also let you scan PC-Free directly to a memory card or USB thumb drive. You can also scan to PDF.  I have not tried this yet, but there is even a scan to email option. Okay, so here is the really wicked part, there is an automatic document feeder for scanning/copying multiple pages. WOW! Always wanted that. Now I have it. No more fumbling around lining up pages on the scanner bed!

You know what, there is so much more to talk about. The Epson Artisan 800 is just packed with so many features that I can't even go into them all. And I almost forgot, it alone costs $299.99 . Head over to Epson and take the interactive tour to learn about all the cool stuff I didn't tell you:

http://epsonamerica.httpsvc.vitalstreamcdn.com/epsonamerica_vitalstream_com/InteractiveTours/Artisan800/Artisan800.html

Read The Full Article:
http://gadget.blogdig.net/archives/articles/December2008/01/Epson_Artisan_800__An
_Eligent_Machine.html

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