Setup & Software Summary   • Setup process is straightforward and simple • Manuals are decent; well illustrated and useful • Software bundle is minimal; no image editing applications are included Product Tour Page 3 of 12 Printing Speed   Setup & Manuals (7.0) The Epson R1900 was a pretty simple printer to install and start using, with the whole process taking us about 25 to 30 minutes. To get going, you have to unbox the printer, remove all of the tape holding the bits in place, plug it in, shake the 8 cartridges (to make sure the ink has not settled) and install them, then wait for the printer to initialize, which takes about 3 minutes. Meanwhile, you can install the software and plug it into one of the two USB ports on the back of the R1900 body.  Once the software is installed, the software gives you the option to output a test page to make sure everything is working correctly. The whole process is described in the quick start guide, a printed version of which comes with the printer. The more advanced features of the printer are described in the user guide, which is available as a PDF on the software CD. Both manuals were well illustrated and cover the various features of the device in a good level of detail. Epson R1900 Manual Excerpts      Drivers (7.0) Like most high-end printers, drivers are included for both Mac and Windows platforms. On the Windows side, drivers are included for XP, Windows 2000 and Vista, while the Mac drivers require Mac OS X 10.4.4 or above. On the Windows side, the driver screens are divided into 4 different pages:  Main, Advanced, Page Layout and Maintenance Windows Driver Options Main Provides access to most of the commonly used features of the driver, such as the paper type, size, etc. A preview of the ink levels is also provided. Most of the commonly used options are on this screen.  Main Controls such as paper size, type, print quality, and the paper source are on this page. Many of the options that are on the Quick Setup page are also here, but there are also additional controls for tweaking the color management features, such as boosting the brightness, contrast, saturation of the 3 main colors. There is no preview of the result, though, so you would be better off doing this in the image editing application before you start printing.  Page Setup Provides access to more in-depth controls, such as the print margins and the scaling of images on the page. The R1900 does not support duplex printing, but you can do double-sided printing by feeding the paper in once, then flipping it over and feeding it in again.  Maintenance The maintenance tab is the home to the everyday plumbing maintenance tasks that printers require, such as checking and cleaning nozzles and  and setting the print head alignment.   Mac users are presented with 4 different screens for controlling the printer, with screens for Quality and Media, Color Options, Borderless Printing and Margin. Mac Driver Options Print Settings Provides options for setting the paper type, print quality and paper source. This will be the most commonly used screen. There are only a few options for media type. The Color Settings option is where you set the printer's own color management settings; there are options for using the color control feature (with settings for standard, vivid, or Adobe RGB), PhotoEnhance (which saturates the colors for more appealing photos) and off. Page Layout Settings Provides options for laying out the image on the page when using banner and other unusual paper types.  Extension Settings Only two options are available on this screen; for setting the printer to check the paper width and for printing onto thick paper. Printer Utility Accessed by clicking on the tool icon in the print settings screen, the utility program allows the user to maintain the printer, running cleaning cycles, etc. One thing to note here is that the Epson driver doesn't allow you to use a custom color profile; you can only use the built-in ones. If you want to use a custom color profile (which tends to produce better results than the built-in ones), then you'll need to use a program that can handle color management itself, such as Photoshop. If you do so, you'll also need to remember to turn off the color management in the driver, as this doesn't happen automatically. Otherwise you could get unpredictable results as the two color profiles clash.   Software (1.6) The R1900 doesn't come with any software beyond the printer utility described above and the Print CD software used to print CD and DVD labels.  Software Print CD For both PC and Mac, this software allows the user to design and print CD and DVD labels on the R1900. The program is pretty straightforward and makes producing simple labels easy. But it's not powerful enough to produce complex labels. Other Software (0.0) There is no additional software with the R1900; it does not include any software to edit or organize images, or any software to control the printer over a network.

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