I only print in black and white, but according to the FAQs it still uses up the colour ink to keep the colour heads clean. The problem is that once the colour cartridges are empty, it does not let you print in B&W anymore. You are FORCED to buy three new colour cartridge even though you do not need or want them. Also when only one colour cartridge goes empty, it forces you to replace the other two even though they have enough ink left.

I owned a CX4600 for a couple weeks and learned a lot about color printers. I wanted a printer that had individual cartridges with the print head in the printer, not in the cartridges, and I wanted to be able to refill them. This printer seemed to fit the bill but it didn't.

The reason is that Epson's excellent DURABrite inks are pigment based, which makes them waterproof and last a long time, but all the color refillers are dye based which means you're giving up the big advantage of this printer if you choose to refill your cartridges. I decided to return the printer before trying to see how it would work with dye based inks.

I was also initially disappointed in the automatic color copies to photo paper. The blacks were not very black. Searching the web, I found out why. If you tell the printer that you have photo paper, it does not use the black ink but instead uses all three colors to approximate black. Simple solution: tell the printer you are using plain paper and now you get a MUCH better copy on photo paper! It has higher contrast and looks more like the original.

One of the previous reviewers observed that there was a lot of black ink left when the colors had run out. Now you know why.

My only complaint with this printer is the high cost of ink but it works great. I also was concerned that the ink jets would clog up (a lot of reviewers claim this) and they are very hard to clean.

This printer and the Mac OS X seem to have a hate-hate relationship. The printer will handle text documents fine, but it is a bear when it comes to printing photos. You have to manipulate several different settings to get the printer set up to handle photos and then it just refuses to communicate with my Mac to print any photos.

The software also has a nasty problem of having to be uninstalled and reinstalled everytime the printing stops for some reason. I even had to do that after the printer stopped because of a paper jam.

My last printer was the HP DeskJet 712. It served me well for several years, but the high cost of ink prompted me to start shopping around for a new printer. I spent a few weeks poring through reviews on CNET, Amazon, Epinions.com, and other sites in search of a decent all-in-one, since I was also in need of a scanner/copier. I did a little shopping around at the brick-and-mortar stores to see the products up close. I decided on the Epson Stylus CX4600 because of its wide array of features and its rock-solid reviews.

First off, the CX4600 is pretty good looking compared to other printers. The size and form is about what you'd expect from a printer with a flatbed scanner. It connects via USB rather than the big printer cable that so many older machines used.

It has a built-in memory card reader (actually a few of them, to accommodate different types of cards), so you don't need to buy a separate card reader to upload your photos from your camera to the PC, and you won't need to use up an extra USB port (my PC only has 2 USB ports so this was important to me.)

Now, for the performance results:

REGULAR DOCUMENT PRINTING
The printer is a bit slow by today's standards when using the higher print quality settings. The quality of the documents is superb and worth the wait, in my opinion. If you are impatient and only need a "draft quality" B&W print, the CX4600 will spit out pages at lower quality VERY quickly (just select "Draft" and "Black Only" from the printer menu before printing.) There are also several options in between the highest and lowest print quality settings.

PHOTO PRINTING
The quality of the photos I have printed is as good as I've seen from any personal color inkjet system. Again, the printer is a bit sluggish, but the quality definitely makes up for it. The resulting prints are durable and don't smudge or show fingerprints as badly as most others. The borderless 4x6 printing works well. Looking at the photos up close, you can see that they aren't professionally developed on photo paper (the print quality isn't quite as crisp) but for snapshots in a photo album, you'd never see the difference.

SCANNING
The scanner works well but isn't very fast. I'm still exploring the software to test out all the different scan options. I have been impressed with the ability to scan multiple photos simultaneously and save them to separate files.

COPYING
I love the copier. It's impressively fast and yields good results in both the B&W and Color settings. Ink consumption might be a factor if you are using this machine in a home office setting and intend to make multiple copies each day.

THE BOTTOM LINE
This printer isn't the fastest machine out there, but the versatility of the software allows you to overcome that obstacle to some extent. The quality is top-notch, especially for a budget-priced machine. Epson has developed a robust and effective software package to compliment the machine. I would recommend the CX4600 to anyone looking for an all-in-one for home use priced under $300.

I bought the CX3500 last week. It is exactly the same as CX4600 but minus the card slot. I have to say that I was surprise with its built quality, the compactness, the photo quality and finally was really surprise with the scanning quality.

I owned HP printers all my life but finally decided against it as the ink catridge is very expensive. I was hooked to the epson after asking my friend to print a photo on a normal A4 paper (he owns a CX65) and let some droplets of water on it and the photo won't smudge.

I have to agree with most comments given. It doesn't come with USB cable but the dealer gave me for free along with 4x6 photo paper. And it can only connet to the PC by USB but I'm not complaining, I have 6 unused USB left.

I found that when I use photoquicker, the photo prints are excellent even on normal A4 paper. But if I'm printing using other application let say powerpoint, the photo lacks resolution.

But my biggest complain is on the ink usage. I don't know, maybe because of the beautiful photo, it really take up a lot of ink. I mean a lot. That just kill the purpose of defecting the HP. With the HP at least I can print a lot before running out of ink.

All in all it a good multifunction device that serve me well. Now I need to find out which shop sell the ink catridge the cheapest.