Epson Stylus Photo 2000

Design, Functions and Controls
The 2000P features a dark grey body, with a metallic silver dust cover that protects the printer head assembly. The body measures 23.6 x 11.2 x 7.1 inches (609 x 311 x 175 millimeters) without the paper trays extended, and weighs 17.6 pounds (8.4 kilograms), making it a good bit larger than average, but not too heavy for the size. The top-mounted paper support handles sheets up to 13 x 19 inches, but I noticed that a 19-inch sheet of paper hung over the end of the tray by quite a bit. The lower paper output tray folds up against the front of the printer, flipping down when the printer is to be used.

The dust cover lifts up to provide access to the two printer cartridges: one Black and one Color (cyan, magenta, yellow, light cyan, and light magenta). The cartridges are easy to install, and when in place, are primed and loaded by pressing the Ink Cartridge Replacement button in the lower right corner of the printer's front panel. The ink cartridges feed into a series of MicroPiezo print heads, with 48 nozzles per color, and the entire assembly travels back and forth across the paper on a metal rod. Ink is deposited by applying pressure to the ink chambers, forcing the ink out through the nozzles. Epson claims that this process is more precise and consistent than competitors' thermal ink printing process (heating the ink to force it out of the print head), and based on the positive market response (and excellent print quality), they seem to have developed a very successful formula. The printer periodically initiates a cleaning cycle, which can be repeated manually several times for deeper cleaning whenever necessary, and an automatic Ink Low / Ink Out detection system enables you to keep up with ink levels for each cartridge, simply by viewing the Printer Driver menu.

The top right side of the printer has an Adjust lever (normally hidden under the top cover), which can be set to the "+" position when you use thick paper or envelopes, to help prevent ink smearing.

At lower right, three buttons control Power (far right), the Load/Eject button (right center), and the Head Cleaning button (near right). Hidden under the cover is a big yellow button that moves the print head into position at the far left-hand side of the printer, so you can change the ink cartridges.

The left side of the printer is blank, with no printer controls.

At the bottom of the printer's back panel are the USB connector for Macintosh 8.5.1 or later or Windows 98 / Me/ 2000 / XP computers, and a Parallel Port for Windows 95 / 98 / NT 4.0 / 2000 computers. The top paper support slides into a plastic slot at the top of the back panel, holding a variable amount of paper, depending on its thickness.

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