Success, but not in the snow...

OK, so I'm easily impressed.

I just printed my first test CD on my new printer and it is too cool. I set it up to print a little light, so it is a little light now, but it might also darken up after the mandatory 24 hour drying period.

It didn't snow today despite the forecasted 5-8 inches we were supposed to get. We did probably get an inch and a half of rain though. That would probably equal up in frozen form.

Anyway, this printer, the Epson Stylus Photo R220 is phenomenal. Especially for the money($100). I've read on several web sites that it's not the best for text printing, but it is supposed to be great for photos. Also inexpensive to boot as far as buying photo paper and ink for 4x6 and 5x7 photos. It will also print 8x10 photos, but photo paper isn't that cheap in 8x10 form. When it really comes down to it, Wal-Mart or Walgreens is the way to go for photo printing.

No consumer printer you can buy will touch their giant Fujifilm machine. You can get your digital photos out of the same machine that people get their film processed in and it will look much better than any consumer printer. And with professional results for .19 cents (4x6), $1.57 (5x7) and $2.84 (8x10) you're a fool for even considering purchasing a printer just for printing photos. You might be able to spend $500-$1000 and get a printer worthy of a contest to beat Wal-Mart, but it will wear out before you can print enough photos to make it worth the money.

The sole reason I bought this printer was for printing these CDs. A guy at a computer store in Owensboro where a friend of mine works, turned me onto it since I didn't want to spend too much money, but wanted better results than the last time. The odd part about it is that all of the manuals and documentation with the printer have all of these precautions and steps you should take to make it all go and they really weren't needed. They wanted to make sure that the image was positioned right and I'm sure that the print heads didn't miss the disc all together. I just printed the thing just to see if it would work and it was perfect.

I also shot a wedding a few weeks ago while my buddy shot the video so I might get some printable DVDs and make another copy of the DVD I authored of the video.

It really amazes me how far everything has come since I started fiddling with computers over 10 years ago. We were compressing huge complex 6 megabyte graphics and having to span them across 3 floppy discs so we could print them on the computer with the printer hooked up to it.

Now I have a wireless network in my house and I have a tiny jump drive that I can plug into any computer that can hold over 100 times as much data as a floppy disc which are all but a thing of the past. And those giant 6 megabyte files are now pushing well past 60 megabytes and they aren't really that complex.

And the biggest change is that I'm not even using Windows anymore. I just got in as Windows 3.1 had given way to Windows 95 which was like the British Invasion when it was released. Educated on Windows machines and laughed at the Mac-heads and their crappy and crashy OS 9 computers.

Now I'm using OS X powered Macs and wonder how you people live with Windows.