For that, of course, you don't get any of the extras that many photo printers include these days, such as the ability to print directly off memory cards, networkability, an LCD screen, or even the ability to print directly from your digital camera.
Design
The Epson Stylus C88 is a simple, sleek, silver and black printer which, at 18.1 x 17.2 x 12.2 inches, should sit comfortably in most spaces. It has a single upright paper input at the back that holds 100 regular sheets or 20 sheets of photo paper, and an output tray in front that holds 30 sheets; the output tray folds up to save space when not in use. The printer comes with both USB 2.0 and parallel ports, so this is a good printer for somebody who is dealing with an older PC.The control panel, which is on top of the printer, is equally basic, and includes three button/light combinations: one to indicate time to change ink cartridges, one to cancel the print job, and power on/off.
Starting Up
As with most printers today, the Stylus C88 comes with a clearly printed starter page that takes you step by step through the install process. Because this is a basic printer, there weren't a whole lot of pieces to put together, and it took maybe ten minutes to unpack it, connect it, and install the four ink cartridges.The only problem occurred after I installed the cartridges. According to the instructions, once the cartridges are in place, there is a short wait while you "charge" the ink. While this is occurring, the instructions say, "Don't turn off the printer while the power light is flashing." However, in my case, the power light didn't stop, even well beyond the estimated two minutes. After about ten minutes, I gave up and went to the next step. Since it didn't print the test page either, I shut down the printer, turned it on again, and retried the print test page. This time, there was no problem.
The printer driver installed easily, with no glitches. Besides the driver, the printer comes with ArcSoft PhotoImpression, a photo editing application; the users guide; links to a couple of online Epson photo storage and enhancement sites, and Web-to-Page, an applet that automatically adjusts Web pages to fit the printed page.
The Printer at Work
The Epson Stylus C88 is rated for up to 22ppm for black ink and up to 12ppm for color. This is definitely not a speedy printer, but at this price, you wouldn't expect it to be. It took over seven minutes to print two letter-sized photos, and almost three minutes to print a 4 x 6 inch photo, which are slow but not unreasonable times.Epson uses its own DuraBrite Ultra inks, which it advertises as long-lasting, water-resistant, and fade resistant. Certainly, they provide nice-looking images: The quality of the printed photos were excellent, especially for an under-$100 printer. Using glossy photo paper, the colors were vivid without being overwhelming; flesh tones and other subtle color features were quite good. On normal paper, photos were adequate for the most part, although one page of a newsletter came out with serious banding on one of the photos.
Text quality was good, and would be fine for day-to-day documents, homework, and the like.
While the printer doesn't feature too many extra features, it does print banners up to 44 inches long, which is a nice added attraction.
