A few days back (well, 12 days then) I said that I’d report back on my experience with the new Epson Artian 810 wireless all-in-one printer, so here we go.  As I mentioned earlier, it is quite compact for what all it does – roughly 18″ x 18″ x 7″ high – yet it weighs nearly 30 lbs.  But overall I am very pleased with the machine.

Setting it up took more than a few minutes, despite the sales flap.  You start out by entering commands in the control panel which is a “soft-touch” device.  Instead of punching buttons, you just touch your fingertip on the display which has the same sensation as a firm pillow.  I don’t know if I like that or not, but I would prefer a more positive way of sending a signal.  Sometimes the display reacts easily to the touch and other times it requires some repeat jabbing to send the signal.

The first thing that needs to be done is to set up the wireless connection.  That is a little tedious because the encryption code is both lengthy and case-sensitive, but that’s not Epson’s fault.  But by carefully following the directions and taking my time, the machine connected with the Wi-Fi transmitter and set itself up successfully.  No problems there.  The next step is to install the drivers on my computer by inserting the enclosed CD-ROM and following the on-screen commands.  In my case this did not work.  After partially installing the programs, I would keep getting a message that my computer was “unable to find the printer on my network.”  After three tries and an outburst of profanity, I waited a while and then went to Epson’s support page (that is provided in the manual) and downloaded the drivers directly from there.  Not only was that successful, but it was much quicker than using the CD-ROM to do it.  I would recommend that anybody setting one of these up, skip the CD and go directly to the web download.  Much better that way.

Loading the paper is a bit more involved than I am used to.  Instead of just shoving a stack of paper into the loading tray, you have to physically remove a free-standing cassette, load the paper and then re-insert the cassette.

After finally getting it all set up, I tried to print something in the usual way by giving the command through the browser and it did just what you would expect.  All systems are go!  Next I tried the automatic 2-sided page printing by printing out a 4-page doc. stored on my hard drive and that went well and quickly.  I learned that I need to reduce the ink density of the printouts because there was some slight bleed through on the pages, but that’s easily corrected.  One minor irritant was the lack of any page numbering (unless it’s part of the doc. itself) and I had to figure out which way up and what order when I had the loose pages.  They came out in the proper order, but I wasn’t prepared for the lack of numbering and was a bit careless taking them out of the tray.

Using it as a copier without going through the computer was a breeze.  Like all the others, you just lift the lid, place the paper on the scanning surface and touch the Print pillow.  Worked fine and it has the usual alternatives available such as light/dark and number of copies, etc.

The scanner was the real surprise.  It’s been a few years since I bought my last flat-bed scanner and they have really improved the technology on that.  It is completely silent and fast.  You don’t get the sound of the scanning bar moving along the bed as it scans the document.  I don’t know what’s going on in there yet, but it sure is quiet.  And everything worked well there, too.  I initiate my scanning though my photo imaging program’s TWAIN connection and that operated as expected.  I haven’t yet tried to initiate the scanning from the desktop.  I’ll do it later just for the heck of it to see how it goes.  Nor have I tried printing on glossy photo paper yet.  I don’t anticipate any problem when I do, though.

One nice feature is the ability to instantly check the ink levels in the six ink cartidges by just two quick clicks on the control pillow.  I never do any FAX ing, so I have no plans to try out that feature.  There are a few other things that I will be checking out, but right now we have to get our emergency equipment checked out.  So let’s get started with that and I’ll see that the coffee pot gets filled again.  See you in the day room in a little while.