I want to purchase a printer from a seller on Gumtree and am concerned about the state of the print heads.

The owner says the printer was in perfect working order when he last used it but it has been sat redundant for 3-4 months.

I know print heads can dry up if not used for a long time but what are the effects when going to use the printer? From what I can tell, the printers 'print head cleaning process' should be able to sort. Is this right?

If this does not work properly, am I left with a unusable printer or do the cleaning packs I have seen out there sort this out?

Printer in question is an Epson Stylus 1400 Photo.

Cheers

This response can be considered vehemently biased because I altogether despise inkjets of any brand due to the consumable cost, a HP printer waste ink spillage I experienced that made a holy mess, and experience with two personal Epson inkjet printers. If the Epson printer has sat unused for awhile, the heads may be clogged and no amount of print head cleaning process may correct it and just waste ink. Symptoms include streaking in the printout, partial colors, or no printout at all.

If you're a gambler and the printer can be had for cheap, I found some head cleaning solution at Fixyourownprinter.com (http://www.fixyourownprinter.com) that the heads can be soaked in (disassemble printer) that seemed to work OK for reviving the clogged heads on a Stylus 1520 I have. The process was time consuming, wasn't particularly fun (and I routinely dis-and-reassemble things just to see what's inside), and I wouldn't do it again.