| The strategy "" like most other printer makers "" has been to straddle the entire spectrum of the market with entry-level machines to the top-end multifunctional devices that cost a packet. |
| The company's Stylus C63 is a low-end, entry-level printer priced in the sub-Rs 4,000 range. It is priced at Rs 3,999 plus taxes. The printer has provisions for both USB and parallel interfaces with a computer. |
| This is quite useful as it can be quite frustrating buying a new gizmo and trying to hook it up with an older generation desktop that does not boast of a USB port. |
| Hooking up the Epson Stylus C63 is simple. Unpack the printer, insert the (four) printer cartridges, plug into the power, insert the USB or parallel cord (provided with the purchase of the printer) into the respective ports, load the software from the CD, and you are ready to go. The entire process took me less than five minutes. |
| The machine boasts of a print resolution of up to 5760 x 1440 dpi (dots per inch) making it perfect for printing pictures or high-resolution documents. |
| For instance, I had to rig up the printer quickly (my office printer was on the blink) to print visas of a friend and her son travelling to the UAE. The visas were received on email and I was not sure whether I'd get good print quality. The prints turned out to be excellent. |
| To check if the claims by Epson were true that the "Durabite" ink used in their cartridges churn out waterproof prints, I dribbled some water over the visa prints. Sure enough, the print was unaffected. Not bad, especially if you want to print high-value documents for your records or pictures. |
| According to the Epson Stylus C63 rating sheet, the machine prints up to 17 black and white prints a minute and nine pages a minute for colour text. That is decent speed, but I suspect in actual operation you'd get slightly lower speeds. |
| Epson printers, like Canon products, do not deliver great value when it comes to ink consumption. The ratings set the shelf life of the cartridges at two years. On ink usage, the manufacturer says at "3.5 per cent ink coverage", the cartridges print 540 pages. |
| That is, each black cartridge can print 540 pages each having 1,200 characters in Times New Roman font at the rate of 10 characters per inch (in normal mode of printing, that is, 360 x 360 dpi). Similarly, colour cartridges last for 250 pages at 5 per cent ink coverage or 1,800 characters each. |
| The C63 is relatively silent in operation. It comes in an appealing design and can sit at one end of your computer table since it is not bulky. |
| Postscript on Reliance India Mobile review: Last fortnight's review of the Reliance India Mobile data service or R-Connect ("Net via cell phone, it's zippier now", December 4), generated more than the usual number of responses. |
| Queries ranged from requests for comparison between GPRS service being offered by cellular service providers to questions on actual surfing speeds. I have very briefly tried the GPRS offering and can't offer credible comments, but a GPRS customer of a Mumbai-based service provider wrote in to say he get speeds comparable only to a dial-up line. |
| Yet, a Rs 500 a month flat pricing sounds compelling. My only concern would be the introductory nature of such pricing schemes. |
| On surfing speeds, R-Connect hooks up at about 115 kbps. Sustained speeds were between 23 kbps and 70 kbps depending on the webpage loading on your page. |
| A slightly more accurate and scientific measure of the sustained speed would be downloading a large file (say, 2 to 3 MB) and measuring the download speed. I tried to download the trailer of The Lord of the Rings and had speeds of between 40 kbps and 100 kbps. This is obviously just one instance. I would love to see longer tests and their results. |
| (The writer works with content company perZuade. His views are personal and may not be endorsed by his employers, the company's investors, customers or vendors. Comments may be sent to josey@perzuade.com) |
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