Masthead
One of my photos

New toy time

February 12th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Technology · No Comments · Technology

Epson Stylus SX515W

My printer has been playing up a lot lately.  Lots of error messages about the ink system failing, and it would also lock up a lot when scanning.

I did a bit of research on the net and found that it was most likely a hardware fault that could easily be fixed with a couple of 30p components from Maplins – but that would depend on me also getting the special screwdrivers to get at the components, a decent soldering iron, and then not causing more damage soldering componentson the circuit board.

Not being a practical type I decided to get a new printer instead.I went for a Epson for a change – the SX515W.   Previously I have had a variety of different HP printers, so this was a bit of a departure.   There were cheaper machines out there, but I thought I would go for something with a wireless connection so that it is easily shared by everybody else in the house.

First impressions: being black, it looks better than the old HP, which was that beige-y colour that all computers used to be.  I reflected a bit on how complete the change has been over the past few years and now you can’t get a beige computer and yet, at least in the corporate environment, printers are still sticking with that colour scheme.

Had a bit of trouble setting it up because I chose to use the laptop for that and the laptop is Windows 7 but the CD that comes with the printer doesn’t have all the drivers for Windows 7.  I had to download them from the net.  Then I forgot that I had MAC address filtering on the router so would not be able to get the printer working until I added its MAC address to the list of allowed devices.

Got there eventually, and it all seems fine now.   I prefer the paper tray on the old HP, which had a separate tray for photo paper and had the paper tray horizontal underneath the output tray, but I’ll have to get used to feeding paper in from the top.

Jonesy

First attempt at scanning was a pleasure though.  I used the full-auto mode and just threw in a photo of our old snake that had been sitting on the table for ages.

The photo was not only scanned but straightened out and cropped to the right size.  I have been doing all that manually.

Not sure yet how to do a big batch of scans, but its early days yet.  So far it has been easier.

Even better, thanks to our new location Comet is only about 100 metres away as the crow flies so once I decided what I wanted I was able to go out and come back with it in a few minutes.

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