This might be helpful to anyone on the list who is thinking about buying new
equipment: Please spread this to other lists, as well, in the hopes that it
will help others.

I purchased an Epson C62 printer last year, which was a good printer. I had
no complaints other than the fact that they build a chip into their ink
cartridges so you can't refill them. For most people, this is not a
problem, but I do a LOT of printing, and refilling is the only way to go.
$3 for new ink is much better than $50. The cartridge chip is something
they don't tell you about when you buy the printer, nor is there anything
about it in the manual, or on their web site. You only learn about it the
hard way - after you've already bought the machine.

Yesterday, an error message popped up and told me that "some parts of the
printer are at the end of their life cycle", and that I should take the
printer to be repaired. There is absolutely nothing in the manual about
this, so I searched the internet and found out that there is also a chip
inside the printer which counts the number of times you clean the ink
nozzles, and then it figures that the waste ink pad is dirty, so it blocks
you from using your printer at all any more until you get a new pad. This
is several hundred cleanings, so for most people, it isn't an issue, but for
people like me, who use their printer a lot, it just became a very big
issue.

The average user will take the machine to the repair shop and be faced with
a bill of at least $80 to have an ink pad changed and have the chip reset.
HOWEVER, guess what else I learned the hard way... the Epson C62's chip
can't be reset. My only resort is to buy a new machine. It is the same for
several other models, but there is no way for you to find out ahead of time
whether the model you are buying is one of them. For these models, you
evidently have to have the whole motherboard changed, at a cost of another
$100 or so, or buy another machine.... which is what this whole situation
was designed for making you do.

I found out that all Epson printers are designed to let you clean your print
nozzles just so many times, and then you can't use the machine any more.
This is not in their manuals, advertising, help files, etc. No one will
tell you this before you buy the machine. Instead of a simple warning and a
pull-out drawer where you can change the pad yourself, you are left with a
machine which is mechanically fine, but which Epson has intentionally
designed to be totally unusable unless you go out and pay a huge repair bill
or simply buy a new one.

And I thought that the cartridge chip was an underhanded thing to do to
their customers!!!

Bottom line - if you are looking for a printer that you will use a lot -
under no circumstances should you buy an Epson. Epson does not have your
best interests at heart, and they have designed their machines to make you
pay all kinds of hidden costs. I'm sure that there are other tricky traps
that I haven't uncovered, and won't - because when I go out today to buy a
new printer - it won't be an Epson.

That being their company's policy, I would not buy any of their other
products, either.

I hope that this saves someone some money and equipment headaches. Please
send this out to as many lists as you can, in the hopes that it will help
others, as well.