EPSON Artisan 810 a Bi-Function, not Multi-Function, Device

Updated on 1/31/2010 at 12:49AM EST

I was in a local OfficeMax, looking at an EPSON Artisan 810 all-in-one (Print, Scan. FAX, Copy), which came in a box covered with text and imagery detailing all of the amazing features it has. To my delight, I discovered that it supported OS X, albeit, they note that "some features like sharing memory cards over a network may not be supported". You'd think that would imply that tertiary (or specialty) functions may not work. But, surely, the basic 4 functions would, right?

It would have been nice if the employees had any kind of a clue with regard to the products they sell. But they don't. So I checked some support forums and the EPSON driver download page (on my phone), and sure enough, they even have Snow Leopard drivers. So I buy the printer and take it home.

I should have suspected something may be amiss when the installer asked me to enter my administrator password, but the dialog requesting the credentials kept losing focus, making it difficult to type in my password. Yikes.

I managed to get through the 30-part install (well, it felt like 30 separate, chained installers). The installer vanished, and I had no printer in my "Print and FAX" Preference Pane. Nice. So, I add a printer manually, and it did see the EPSON as a Bonjour device. One down!

So I jump over to try the scanner, and I get a troubleshooter. After scrounging around the web, I found some advice from a user who discovered that you have to go into the Utilities folder and run an EPSON scanner utility to find and configure the device. ugh. Once I did that, it seemed to work. Two down!

Now, on to the FAX. The preference pane did not see a FAX device anywhere, and the EPSON printer itself has no FAX capabilities. So back to the web. After an hour of searching, nada, and no one even complaining about this apparent "missing" feature. So I hit the manual, and notice that FAXing from a computer is only supported in Windows.

At this point, I'm not even going to try to get the "Copy" function working.

OFFICEMAX Knowledgeable Sales Staff: FAIL
EPSON Customer Support: FAIL
EPSON Product: FAIL
EPSON Integrity: FAIL

So, in summary, for Mac users, this is a bi-function, not a multi-function, device. It prints and scans. They should put this on the box so people know what they're getting (or in this case, not getting). It's a real shame. I went with EPSON because Hewlett Packard did something similar with a computer I bought. The machine was billed as a multimedia and entertainment computer, yet, it couldn't play a game that was 5 years old. Do any of these companies have their metaphoric poop together?

And don't get me started on Lexmark.