Well, over the past couple weeks, my Epson Workforce 645 printer failed to operate normally after replacing the black ink cartridge. The printer would keep displaying a generic “printer error” and all I could do was turn it off and on to retry which never worked. I had received this error before but this was the first time it never came back alive.  I even unplugged it for awhile with no positive results.  So, I went to the Epson support site and found the nearest authorized service center at AAMComp Computer Technologies in Oklahoma City. After a few days it was determined to be a bad printhead that would cost $185 to fix as the printer was 4.5 years old and out of warranty. Yeah.. uhm, no.

As it happens, they had an Epson XP-520 Printer that some other customer had given them that was still under the original warranty and in working order.  I decided to buy it for the reduced price of $74 (total). Here’s what it looks like:

It seems to work well and the color print-outs actually look a little better than the Workforce printer did in standard/normal mode.  Scanning also works well.  I did lose the fax capability that the Workforce had but I never used it and had actually disabled the Windows services that controlled it a long time ago. Hopefully this one will last awhile.

I have updated my hardware page to reflect the addition. 🙂