It's an Epson CX6000, which means it has what is widely acknowledged to be a problem with the ink cartridges -- it thinks they're empty when they're half full. Yes, you got it -- it's a pessimistic printer. Anyhow, that's not why I went in.
I went in because when I drove to do my research in LA, I arrived to find that the printer was printing sort of the top half of every other line. I aligned the print heads and reinstalled the driver, but no dice. Then I read that my laptop (which is an old Powerbook) isn't compatible with the printer. Okay. I assumed that when I came home to my PC, everything would be fine. But it wasn't -- the printer still only printed the top half of every other line. For about a month, it sat unused because I am in medical school and don't have the time to deal.
Finally, I took it to Best Buy. They looked at it promptly, for about twenty minutes, before realizing that they didn't have the right driver because I didn't bring the CD with me. The guy said, "we can't look at it here, we have to send it out." I asked if he couldn't just get the driver online. He said he couldn't. I asked how much it would take to send it out and fix it. He said, "Well, $35 to send it out, and from what you're describing, $50 to fix it." Um, no, I wasn't about to pay $85 to fix a $100 printer. I asked if he had an electronics recycling center, and he said they do but that it wasn't open (?!). Go figure. So I took it off his hands and walked out.
As I drove home, I gave the printer a stern lecture. "I'll give you two hours of my time," I said, "I've been pretty good to you, and I'll give you a fair shake, but if you're not working by tomorrow morning, I'm giving you to charity." Fifteen minutes and a print head cleaning/alignment later, it was printing perfectly.
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