Sadly, Epson is not what they used to be.

Check out this: http://www.thegraphicsstore.com/r-17257 ... fault.aspx

http://www.epinions.com/content_134685036164

I bought my father a CX4200 and it clogged all the time and after 150 bucks worth of cartridges and we haven't printed 150 pages yet, I called Epson with my CNET comments and told them it was unacceptable and that my next unit will not be Epson. They sent my father a new upgraded model CX4800 for free. I didn't even have to ship the old one. Of course, it was just under warranty. Whew.

I loved Epson. I still have my Epson Color Stylus for over ten years and it prints great on cardstock. Ink is getting hard to find and that will be the reason for getting a new one soon enough. Amazing.

I suspect it might be the waterproof inks they use. One site said there was kink in the tubing and it clogs with dried ink like an artery. The trick is to clean out the tube.

Some Epsons don't use waterproof inks and they seem fine. Sorry to hear about your luck.

Thanks for the pointers. Looks like I have nothing to lose by trying to clean it out myself. Still have the old Compaq/Lexmark printer, and with a good cleaning, I can put that back into service. Miss the old Canon Bubblejet 5000 that was stolen several years ago during a breakin at the house. This Epson was something we saw on QVC one day and had a good 3 or 4 payment plan. We'll just have to watch for another. Also, our regular desktop computer crashed some months ago, and to print, we had to move the notebook to the home office, plug in the USB cable and boot up the computer, and my wife just didnt bother to print anything for months, so the old Epson had more than ample time to dry up. We are now moving to DSL and I am putting a wireless router in the house so we can print from any room we happen to be in, and it will be so much easier to keep the printer clean when we are using it all the time again. Just amazing what the lack of black does when I test out the printer with some things. I have a B-24 nose kit PDF file from the Smithsonian (a model of the plane here at the Air Force Museum) that I was going to print to try to get my brother into the hobby, and it just doesnt look right without the black ink.

Thanks again for everyone's input.