Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Epson WorkForce 545/645 Series incapable of printing its own User's Guide

A retired Fire Dept Battalion Chief called me recently to help out with a few computer problems, mainly related to the new fully-featured Epson printer/scanner/fax he'd just purchased. I'd assumed he needed help installing it, but when I got there he'd already had that covered. His (odd, I thought) request was to help him print the detailed User's Guide to the printer, which (despite the inclusion of a "quick start guide" and a full-color brochure hard-selling the printer he'd just bought) was not included. 


We went to the support site, and found a link to the User's Guide. The manual looks like this but you can't print it! You'd have to expand all the little +'s and expand some more and some more and click print on each individual page in order to accomplish this. 


So I called Epson to request that they email us a PDF file, or some printable version, and the kind voice of Sanj from Pakistan told us over the speakerphone, "No, there are none, and please you should check the installation CD". When I explained that the CD only contains an HTML link (to the same page linked above) and no actual file for the guide, he asked why Chief wanted to print a 100+ page technical user manual...
He's interested in all the detailed features and in learning about the Epson product so he can access them, naturally. 
So why then does he not visit our site and search for it that way?
Because he likes to read the actual manuals, and print things out; that's a reason he bought a printer.

1 comment:

computersWTF said...

There's a workaround here, but it doesn't work on my version of Acrobat- just freezes, displays no progress window or meter, and I have to Force Quit. :(

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