A few tricks about the R200, but good printer.

Okay, I really put the cart before the horse on this purchase. I bought some DVD-R for my G5 Mac, thinking that I can burn some movies. Since I saw the deal online at a great price, I figured to buy the printable DVD's. Turns out there are 2 ways to print on a DVD, a thermal and an ink-jet. Simply put, do not get the wrong TYPE of disc for the printer that you want to use!

I bought the Epson R200 AFTER I bought the DVD-R. When I tried to print, the ink was terrible! Then I realized my mistake! I bought the thermal printable DVD's! Well, now I use that media for data, and bought inkjet printable DVD's for my iMovie HD -> iDVD burns.

Now to the printer review.

It's a basic inkjet, with the paper loading from the back/top. The ink comes in 6 different cartridges...thus you can fill only the color that you run out. In theory, this should decrease your ink costs, as you wont have to replace the color cartridge if only 1 of the colors was used up.

The printer works well with paper...I used 90 brightness, white Georgia Pacific paper. It's not bad, but I suspect that brighter paper will make the text even better. Overall, with a magnifying lens, you can see a little blurriness of the text, but more than comparable to a laser printer.

The real glory of this printer is the ability to print onto a DVD. I was able to make a customized DVD label very quickly with the Epson software....EPSON Print CD is installed as part of the package with the installation disk. You can have a background specified, and Epson provides a few backgrounds (which are not the greatest, but works well in a pinch)...luckily, the backround is a drop down window which allows you to select any JPEG file for the backround. I used one of their stock backgrounds, and then added a picture from my iPhoto collection for the foreground. You can add text, and bend/bow/distort it to fit on the disk...you can specify the degree of arc of text, so that it runs in concert with the edge of the disk...a nice touch.

The printing of the disk is a bit tricky. First you must put the blank DVD into a plastic tray supplied with the printer. You then open the inkjet to drop down a DVD/CD slot. Then you put the plastic tray (with your disk in it) into this drop down slot. You must align the arrows from the tray and the slot...but I've noticed that the arrow from the tray should be a little deeper than the corresponding arrow on the printer (slot). If the arrows are exactly lined up, the printer will report an error and spit the tray out. No big deal, just reinsert the tray again, but just a little deeper---about 1-2 mm deeper will be okay.

The second tricky issue is that the tray is fed into the printer, and actually extends out from the back of the printer! This was a bit of trouble that epson doesn't mention at all...my first attempt nearly knocked an object off my desk by the backward tray. Be sure to check for clearance BEHIND the printer! About 10 cm behind the printer ought to be enough clearance.

When the disk comes out, you should let it dry for 24 hours (according to Epson's info). The disk comes out looking great...and now my grandmother can view her GREAT-grandchildren on the disk and on her DVD machine!

Good product, Epson.