You need to go on the Advance preferences screen and not the Basic one Mark. When you select 'Grayscale' all the colour controls are grayed out.

I only ever use Advanced (otherwise Epson tries to colour manage for me) - I can only guess that the driver dialogs are different for the two printers :confused:

There isn't a grayscale option under Color Controls. If I select PhotoEnhance, I can select a tone, as illustrated on the attached.

Anyway, from the Epson website - the R800 FAQ
Q: The color ink cartridge is expended even though I print in black only. Why does this happen?
A: To keep the print head clear, the printer uses a small amount of ink from all the cartridges whenever it prints and to keep the print head primed. Even if you select Black Only, some color ink is still being used.

Epson R800 FAQ

That looks like a canned answer but I have not found anything to suggest otherwise and I'm not going to waste my ink proving it ;)

Sorry Nogbad for highjacking the thread a little :)

Thats strange Mark. Fairly sure that the grayscale setting on the R800 only uses matte black as I have printed several hundred pages of text in one hit and only the black ink goes down.

I definately don't have that option - and I'll take your word on the ink use :)

Interesting direction this thread has taken. I now seem to have reviewed my opinion of epson, and perhaps they are not as bad as they appear.

Will continue to review the magazine reviews and then decide which one to choose.

Nogbad