Epson inks that we used in 1996 and 1997 faded within weeks and were useless after a few months (even indoors). The Epson 1520 and Epson 3000 are potentially a bad choice. We were so unhappy with the Epson 1520 that we demanded our money back from Epson.

I just talked with two people who owned an Epson 3000 and they were not impressed whatsoever. One user of an Epson 3000 reported his had all the bad traits of the model 1520 (sealed ink containers, overpriced ink, overpriced special paper required). Worse, when they are unhappy, both the Epson 1520 and Epson 3000 print digital symbols all over your expensive paper. That's right, they ignore your nice photograph and instead print digital garbage. Then the Epson printers continue to print digital garbage page after page until you manually flush the memory and reset everything. A computer peripheral is supposed to compute and not require that the end user do everything for it.

Also, an Epson cannot handle text without adding a software RIP. All wide format ink jet printers require a RIP, but the ads and reviews of Epson usually forget to warn you about this extra $150 you are going to have to shell out. Besides, I was not at all impressed with the quality of the Epson prints. We noticed banding and all kinds of defects of this nature. For letter size we recommend an Alps; for tabloid size and above we recommend the Encad Chroma24.

All the prints we did with the Encad printer attracted all kinds of favorable comment. I am completely content with Encad printers, media, and ink.