And on the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to the Home Office Warrior:

Thanks to the kind folks over at Epson, I’ve had this printer for a while, and given my normal dislike for printers, the Epson WorkForce 600 had a lot to prove. As a home office worker, if anything could stop my rampant visits to Kinko’s would be a welcome change. Nothing against Kinko’s… but the coffee there isn’t top notch. I like my own coffee maker at my home office much better.

So how good is the Epson WorkForce 600? I won’t be drinking any more Kinko’s coffee. Let’s start there.

As an all-in-one, historically they tend to get some things right, some things very wrong, or just forget what “all” really means. My old HP PSC 750 did copies, was a decent printer – as long as I didn’t print from Adobe Photoshop – and was quite sturdy. The scanner… eh. It scanned. Sometimes. And it was always tethered to the main machine. Oh… and it was huge. A lapbuster.

Now the Epson WorkForce 600 isn’t exactly a small little guy, but it’s not as heavy, therefore not as move-unfriendly as the PSC 750. It supports a few other things that the prior “all-in-one” I had also seemed to have forgotten; namely fax. Oh, and after you’ve installed the drivers on the main machine, set up takes only a few painless moments, you can use it’s built-in wifi connectivity too. Yes. I can place this thing where my aquarium used to be.

Talking about my missing aquarium – long story there – Epson uses the Dura-Bright Ink in individual cartridges. So if magenta runs out, you replace just magenta… not a combination of magenta/cyan/yellow, like my old HP PSC 750 forced me to. And the Epson Dura-Bright Ink is also water proof. Yes… water proof. Now if only I had the constant threat of my aquarium dumping water on my images… still though. The fact that the ink will quickly dry on matte, gloss, or special paper quickly and not run is something I never knew I missed until I got that feature.

The only con so far – and I’m finding this really a nitpick – is the fact that it has a very shiny black finish. It’s the same type of finish that’s on the fingerprint and dust magnet Sony Playstation 3. It looks great when clean, but now since I can place this thing where I wish, it means more use, thus more fingerprints and dust.

The print quality is a ton better than my prior printer. In fact, in a few cases, I’d almost call this near laser-quality. I saw some banding on some colors, but nowhere near the amount I had gotten used to. But legibility is tops. And I mean to the point I’ll not be ashamed of any prints that I take with me to meetings from home.

With a fax cache of 180 pages, it also feeds my need to use a fax machine. It has built-in double-sided printing. There’s a full-color 2.5 inch LCD that swivels out for better viewing to go along with the internal memory card reader so I can pop in my compact flash, SDHC card, from my camera and it reads from there without any issues. And I can print without even firing up the computer.

So let’s recap. The Epson WorkForce 600 is a darn good: printer, fax, copier. It connects to my network via ethernet, wi-fi, or connected to a computer via USB and shared that way. And it can copy up to 100 pages once I just set it and go. It has double-sided printing and an automatic feeder that can handle up to 30 pages. The ink cartridges are high capacity, water-proof and after a month of using this printer, the quality hasn’t dropped at all and I’ve gone through a full ream of high-quality ink-jet paper.

And most importantly, it will keep me from drinking that yucky coffee at Kinkos.

Yes. I like a printer. There, I said it. And your home office warrior in your life will also like it too – 4.5 out of 5 (“A Must Buy”).

For more information about the WorkForce 600 please click here.

Right now, at Epson and Amazon both have this normally (list price) $200.00 – $280.00 printer for the low price of $149.99. Jump on it. Epson’s instant $50.00 off special is located here and Amazon’s special price – you have to add it to your cart to see the price – is located here.

[ Amazon ] [ Epson ] [ Epson WorkForce 600 ]

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