Jim,

I'm not associated with Epson (or RH). I'm not even what one would call a "happy customer" of either (Epson doesn't care - I'm on my third Epson printer, never having owned any other make; I use RH for various reasons, but I would rather be running Gentoo).

That said, my system used to be RH 7.3 and Epson Stylus Color 740 - the print quality was sufficient, but not extraordinary. Top quality couldn't be acheived, although I didn't spend lots of time trying to figure it out. It's now RHEL3U3 with Epson Stylus CX5400 (3-in-1), and the print quality is great. I don't attribute the change to the upgrade of the printer. Well, not much of it.

I think that the ESC 740 is newer than RH7.2. So it might be worth your time to upgrade the OS - at least to RH9. Even then, comparing to the iBook may be unfair - I think RH9 is significantly older, so the level of code in supporting the devices may not be as advanced as if you were comparing more contemporary OS levels.

It is not unfair, however, to compare Linux vs iBook just because Epson provides Mac drivers. That is a true and honest cost of going with Linux.