Louis' Ramblings

Oh, the joy

I bought a new printer this weekend, an Epson Stylus Photo 900. Its big feature is that it can print on CD-Rs and DVD-Rs Its a really nice piece of hardware, and the team that designed the printer should be applauded. Unfortunately, everyone involved with its software and documentation should be ashamed.

The manual ignores a bunch of sections it should have (unpacking the printer, some finer details about the ink cartridges, etc), but hey, I'm a geek, I don't generally read manuals anyone. The printer comes with two discs. The first contains drivers for Mac OS (9 and X), and Windows (ME/XP/2000, I think). It also contains CD label design software for Mac OS 9 and Windows. If you look through the manual, all the pictures of the label design software are running under 9 (though all the pictures of the driver and printer utilities are running under X). The second disc is a copy of Discus EP 2.72 for Mac OS X, with some instructions on an insert int he disc sleeve. So far so good.

DO NOT INSTALL THE PRINTER DRIVERS. The drivers on the disc just crash whatever app attempts to print. Fortunately Epson helped out users trying to debug this by leaving a full set of debug symbols in their drivers. And people wonder why printer drivers are so large. After going to Epson's webpage I managed to find slightly newer drivers that appear to be more stable. You'd think they might mention on the driver page that the in box drivers crash under the current versions of the OS, it might save people time.

So I fired up Discus EP 2.72. Ugh. The interface is certainly not Mac like. Everything is big and clunky, and trying to make you pay for a more full featured version. I clicked on the type of project I wanted (CD), and then I had to select the type of printer I have. And it doesn't remember, you have to do it each time. It has interesting typographic control, but all the text looks really blocky and pixelated, they do no antialiasing, even at huge sizes with text on an arc (fortunately it appears much smoother when it actually prints). So I hit print and wait. The colors and image quality on the CD surface is nice. But ITS OFF CENTER.There appear to be no expert settings to fix it, and since the printer seems to print fine otherwise I can only assume that despite making me select my specific printer (every time I want to use the software) they can't even calibrate their templates right. I think I need to write a quick program to generate PDFs of CD surfaces so I can print out CD-Rs that do not look like shit.

Okay, I its not fair of me to complain so much. Its not like this is so much worse than any other product. Consumers put up with shitty quality, and manufacturers deliver it. In this case I am satisfied, I can write my own software, and the hardware seems good. But this weekend I am in a bad mood to vent, so I am venting.

If you have read this far you have far too much time on your hands. My parents visited a week ago, which was cool. My dad felt a little ill though. He was still feeling ill after they returned to Philadelphia, so he went to a doctor, and they decided to check him into the hospital for observation. The good news, it looks like its not that serious. The bad news, it looks like he is going to have to have surgery in the next couple of days. He seems to be in good spirits. I hate surgery.