The Epson Artisan 810

Or, alternatively entitled…

The Geek and I (And Our Printer)

Last year I was fortunate to receive an Epson Artisan 800 All-in-One printer. Epson was eager for me to review the product, but I’m just your average stay-at-home mom blogger who is generally more accustomed to reviewing toys and beauty products than electronics, so I handed the printer over to my geeky network system admin husband for review. He was less than thrilled because he is not exactly the “printer” guy at work. He is more accustomed to those large enterprise laser printers than the latest residential printer. In fact, he has not used a home inkjet based printer in years, as we have always had an old black-and-white laser printer on our home network. The cobbler’s son never has shoes, so the saying goes?

Well, after a thorough review of the Epson Artisan 800, my husband was impressed. The All-in-One surpassed his expectations.

I believe he said something about wireless and wired networking along with USB blah blah blah. But what really impressed him was how you can easily scan over the network to either our MAC or Windows PCs. Whatever with the geek speak. I can just tell you that this printer was extremely easy to use. I can’t remember a time when I’ve had to call my personal PC helpdesk (my husband) to get help with this printer. In fact, after setting it up, he left it to me to figure it out. Before long I was printing, faxing, scanning and copying. It all worked and it worked well. No more reboots every few days like our old network attached printer. Finally, we had a printer that pleased both the geek and the housewife.

The other feature we both love is the easy to read LCD screen which makes all the function simple to access. He loves it because “it allows for easy configuration of network addresses and wireless network security with long shared keys.” I love it because it walks me through all of the printing/faxing/copying/scanning features. Did I tell you that I love the one-touch copy feature? So easy.

So recently, Epson let me know about the new Epson Artisan 810. I was a little hesitant. My Artison 800 is great, and we really have no need for a new printer so soon. But they convinced me to give it a try and report on the improvements that have been made.

When it arrived, I decided to give the 810 a chance to shine so once again I and handed it over to my husband. The printer sat in its box for a couple of weeks until his geeky curiosity got the better of him.

While I was watching So You Think You Can Dance one night, I heard him ripping open the box and checking out the printer. At first glance, it looks just like the Artisan 800. But the 810 does a few things better. And it has a couple of new features that we expect to use regularly.

All the good things that were part of the 800 are still there in the 810. In addition, for my husband and others who like the latest, he reports that there is support for both the Snow Leopard and Windows 7 operating systems. But, he makes this warning: Be sure to download the latest print drivers for these operating systems from Epson, and don’t try to install from the enclosed CD. (Epson provides a nice “Read This First!” warning sheet notifying you of this information.)

So what’s the scoop on this new printer? Here are some of the new features that my husband really likes:

• A front USB charging port. Now our kids can charge their flip cameras and ipods on the printer, and they don’t have to mess with my computer (or its setting).
• Duplex printing. Hurray. Much less wasted paper.
• “There’s an app for that.” That’s right, you can now print wireless from an iPhone and iPod Touch with the ePrint and Print-and-Share applications.

Also, you can use the Artisan 810 to make coloring book pages and personalized notepaper, CDs/DVDs, greeting cards or birthday invitations, and so much more. I’m anxious to put it to work.

And that’s about it. The Epson 810 is an All-In-One printer that just works. The Geek and I are satisfied. Priced at $190 with free shipping right now on Amazon.com, the Epson Artisan 810 is quite affordable to boot.