Jury is still out

The R300 is one of the Stylus line with the added feature that it prints directly on "inkjet printable" CDs and DVDs. It does this through the use of a special "feeder tray" which is inserted into a manual flap which folks out of the front, so that the tray positions the CD or DVD beneath the print heads (with a complicated little "dance" of the feeding mechanism).

I purchased this printer on August 18, 2005 and it has been primarily used to print on inkjet-printable CDs and DVDs. Because of the overly high price of genuine Epson print cartridges (it uses 6 and gobbles up the ink), I started to use some from PrintPal. Oddly, little by little one cartridge would have ink but stop "participating" and then the next and so forth until about one week ago, all but the black print was just not printing. Mind you, I had used all the troubleshooting stuff from the Epson printer control panel, including repeated printer alignments, head alignment and head cleaning. I resorted to the Epson online troubleshooter which took me through many of the same steps which I had been doing myself and finally said "Based on the information you provided, here is what you need now." (and the phone number for Epson U.S. support. After getting through to them, it turns out that although my unit was technically about one week out of the 1-year warranty, that Epson was going to honor it and gave me two service centers in Honolulu (one island down from where I live). I contacted one which never called back ("SysTek") and then called the second which said "ship it over and we'll be in touch with Epson Customer support and probably have it back to you in a week to 10 days". I shipped it USPS and hopefully they will be able to diagnose the problem and replace the appropriate part. SEPARATE OBSERVATION: I had difficulty with the original CD feeder -- which in the original unit had stiff clear plastic flanges on the edge which feeds into the computer. About three months after dealing with this feed and mostly difficult times, I contacted Epson and they mailed me a replacement feeder tray which seems to have been redesigned (with solid black flanges on the feed end which are part of the tray, rather than stick-ons). If you have the older type, I would suggest talking to Epson about a replacement. The new design works pretty nicely.