Epson Artisan 800

Sunday afternoon I set out to get a new scanner - one with the capability of scanning in photographs at different resolutions and sizes than the original image (ie. enlarging the image through the scanner itself rather than through post-processing programs). Originally I was thinking about $100 on a scanner - just a scanner, not a combo printer or anything like that. I had done some research and learned that I was really interested in getting and Epson scanner. They are used by most professional photographers and have the software that would enable me to do what I wanted and so much more. Dave and I ventured out to do some shopping and neither Future Shop (and therefore Best Buy) nor Staples had any Epson scanners. BUT while we were at Staples, we saw the Epson Artisan 800 printer. It is a pretty expensive machine - it is a fax machine, copier, printer, scanner and photo printer. It pretty much does everything. It has 6 ink cartridges (black, yellow, light cyan, cyan, magenta and dark magenta) and two paper trays (this enables you to always have photo paper and regular paper in the machine and therefore you don't have to switch back and forth as much). I was really interested in the machine and went home and did some more research.
I learned through the fabulous Internet about its pros and cons and read a couple reviews from both companies and customers. The cons of the machine mostly had to do with copying and regular printing and it is expensive to use a regular printer and apparently the copying is a little blurry. Neither of these things matter to me as I do not intend on using it for regular printing or copying documents. I was happy with what I read and since I have been wanting a photo printer for a year or so now I figured I might as well got a machine that can act as a scanner and a photo printer since it does both very well.
We went back to Staples and purchased the machine. I then spent the next 2 hours getting it setup. It took so long due to the fact that I wanted to set it up through the wireless network as the primary computer in the house is a laptop which is almost never connected directly to the network via actual cords. It is pretty awesome that I can be on the main floor and yet still able to scan or print documents to the printer up in the office.
Anyway, I have scanned some photographs already (for the photo restoration assignment I have in my Photoshop course) and am very happy with the resulting images. I will have to wait until I have more time on my hands until I can test drive the photo printing abilities but I am excited about it to say the least.