[TriLUG] Printer Decision Made - Scanner help requested.

[Joel Ebel]

SANE lists the CX6400 as having good support, so odds are in your favor 
for getting it to work in some manner.  Check out the links to the back 
and and man page from here:

http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html#Z-EPSON

Joel

Matt Pusateri wrote:
> Triluggers,
> 
> Thank you to everyone that responded when I was asking for printer
> recommendations.
> 
> I have not been a big fan of HP products(inkjets) as of late, although
> they probably have better Linux support than other vendors.  Anyhow I
> had had an epson inkjet before and was happy with it, so I decided to
> give epson another go.  Since my scanner broke, I have been looking at
> PSC/MF printers.  I found the Epson Stylus CX6600 at Best Buy for $199
> less $50 Mail in Rebate (MIR)from BB and Epson also has a $50 MIR, so
> it brings the price down to $99. I also had a $20 rebate card, so the
> printer should end up only costing me $79. The printer has a
> scanner/copier function as well as a  card reader in it.  The printer
> has an
> interesting feature that allows you to copy right to the card reader
> without the computer, kinda a neat feature although I don't know how
> much I will use it.  The one downside is that there is no LCD screen
> to preview pictures, but I didn't want to spend the money for a
> printer with an LCD just so we could print directly from the card.  I
> figure we mostly just upload pictures to snapfish and usually have to
> edit/crop or clean them up anyhow. Plus I just don't see us printing
> from the CF card directly to the printer.  My wife doesn't like the
> quality of digital pictures printed on an inkjet, so for me it was a
> waste to spend more.  Plus I didn't want to have a ton of $ invested,
> because I really want a color laser.
> 
> Supposedly the CX6600 is the same as the CX6400 just without a USB
> cable in the box.  Big retailers wanted to be able to sell the USB
> cable seperately.
> 
> Since I have 14 days to get the printer working or take it back, I
> have done the following.
> 
> FreeBSD, cups would print a test page, but I couldn't get any app from
> gnome to print.  Not sure why, buy I got annoyed and had space on the
> HD so I installed Ubunto.
> 
> Ubunto worked fine with the gimp-print drivers with cups.  And
> recognized the card reader fine as well.  Didn't get to configure the
> scanner as I found RPM's on Epson's JP site and then decided to try
> CentOS instead.
> 
> Loaded CentOS and the gimp-print/cups drivers work fine.  Although I
> havn't been able to get the Epson JP site drivers to work.  Also
> sometimes it seems as though it doesn't know the print job has
> finished.  The card reader is detected fine and when you insert a
> card, and gets automounted and GtkThumbs asks if you want to import
> the photos.  So that all kind of works.  I haven't got the scanner
> working yet, the scanner RPM's from epson didn't work and it was too
> late last night to tinker anymore.  A quick google check seems to
> indicate it is possible to get it to work.
> 
> If anyone has any tips on getting the scanner to work I would
> appreciate it.  I have to decide soon if I am going to keep the
> printer or take it back.  If I can't get the scanner to work, I have
> to decide if I still want to keep it, for the $79 I have invested it
> still wouldn't be that bad.
> 
> 
> Thanks for letting me ramble.
> 
> Matt
>