Pros: Serial, Parallel, USB connectors all standard. Excellent print quality for a four-color printer. Fast.
Cons: Some configuration problems when connected to USB port. Nozzles tend to clog easily.
For: PC, Mac. A "740i" model is styled in iMac style "Bondi Blue" transparent plastics.
Epson's line of printers is getting quite confusing. It has both four-color "Stylus Color" and six-color "Stylus Photo" models with similar names, appearances and feature-sets at a variety of price points. Some of its models have AppleTalk and/or Ethernet ports, permitting them to be networked. So, how does its model 740 fit into the picture? For starters, the 740 is not replacing the 700. Both continue to exist. Moreover, the 740 is not a "Stylus Photo," but a "Stylus Color" which means it's a four-color and not a six-color printer. And, while the 740 has a Mac Serial port, it is not an AppleTalk port (which looks confusingly similar), and thus does not support networking.
iMac Test Results
The USB ports on the Stylus 740 allow this printer to "plug-and-play" with unprecedented ease. Via USB, you can move the printer from one computer to another with the power left on, and you can use it with Apple's iMac, with a driver available for download from Epson's website (www.epson.com). Note, however, that some iMac users have reported frequent computer lockups and freezes when attempting to print to an Epson Stylus Color 740 printer. Epson strongly recommends that, before installing the Epson USB Printer Drivers for iMac, users download and install the iMac Update 1.0 from Apple. Our tests of the printer on an iMac revealed another oddity: after canceling a printout with the printer connected to USB port #2, the keyboard stopped working, although the iMac's mouse, connected to the keyboard, still worked. Weird. We switched USB connections (i.e., the printer was connected to USB port #1), everything returned to normal. Apple cautions that the iMac's keyboard is a low-power USB hub and can cause problems for certain devices.
PC Test Results
We tested the Stylus 740 with a USB-capable PC running Windows 98 and had no problems (when we plugged the USB cable in, Win98 detected the printer automatically and loaded the necessary drivers from the supplied CD-ROM), other than an annoying, repeatable, USB configuration issue on a PC with a pre-1999 BIOS: after restarting our PC, the printer would not print until the USB cable has been removed and re-inserted. In other words, when we tested it using the USB interface, it would never print after starting or restarting our PC. We had to pull out the USB cable and reinsert it to get the printer to print. Then, it printed normally and reliably until we shut down or restarted. It did this even with no other USB devices connected, and it did not seem to matter whether it was in USB port #1 or #2. How annoying! Updating the PC's BIOS fixed this issue, as did our tests of a second system based on an Abit BH6 motherboard.
Epson mentions a similar issue in the USB addendum to the 740's manual. There, it cautions that if the printer does not work correctly when connected to a secondary or pass-thru USB port, you should disconnect other USB devices, connect it to the primary port and try again. So much for USB's theoretical convenience. It's worth mentioning that the printer does not come with connecting cables, USB or otherwise.
Print quality on the Stylus 740 was excellent -- for practical intents and purposes, flawless. When viewed close up, you can see faint dither patterns, but at normal viewing distances, it looks like a continuous-tone color photo. There was no discernable banding at all. We tested it with a variety of paper-types: Glossy Film, which strongly resembles glossy photographic print stock (especially after you print your masterpiece on it!) is the most expensive and, you might expect, produces the best results. At a cost of over a dollar a page -- in fact, closer to $2 when paper and ink costs are added together -- it should. We also tested five other types of stock: Glossy Paper, a slightly less smooth glossy stock, with a cost per page of about $1; coated "single-sided" paper (so called because it has a white clay coating on one side) with a cost per page of about $0.60, non-coated "high-quality/specially formulated for ink-jet printers" paper, plain "junk bond" (okay, it's not really called that; it's usually called copier bond) paper and transparency film. Most computer supply and office equipment stores carry all these papers. Despite its low cost per page, our advice is to avoid copier paper for anything other than plain text. The better quality coated and specially formulated glossy stocks produce superior results well worth their extra cost. Compare the output of the Stylus Color 740 with that of the HP DeskJet 722C. Both printers used premium glossy stock and the highest quality settings to reproduce these images.
The most common problem encountered by Stylus 740 owners is clogged print nozzles. This tends to happen if the printer is not used regularly -- and it's almost certain to happen should you remove the print cartridge from the unit for any reason. It's very difficult to clean the nozzles, but not impossible. Buying new cartridges is not a quick-fix solution. A Sept. 25, 2002 discussion at MacInTouch.com describes some possible fixes.
Editors' Choice
The Epson Stylus Color 740 won The Computer Paper Editor's Choice in the Oct. '98 Lab Test of color inkjet printers. Good call, except for the lack of attention to the USB and head-clogging issues, we'd say.
For Further Reading:
How to unclog an Epson printer:
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