Excellent AIO Printer

I considered this printer and the Epson RX680 AIO. After reading a lot about the Epson printers using a lot of ink for head cleaning, the consumables became an important factor. This printer has 1 picoliter technology which surpasses the Epson model. The optical scanner resolution is also higher on this model at 4800x9600 dpi. One last consideration is that the print head on this model is removable and can be cleaned or replaced without a visit to a service center.

Well written manuals seems to be a lost art form. The manual that came with this printer is the exception. I found it to be very useful and easy to find small details that I was in search of. With that said though, the printer is very easy to use. The large 3.5" LCD screen has plenty of display area to guide you along the way for whatever task you are doing.

Printing from photos, slides or negatives are all easily accomplished and the quality is very good. If you hold the copy by itself, it looks excellent. If you hold it side-by-side to the original, you will see that the color gradation of the copy is not as good as the original. However, at this price point, I do not think you will achieve a better photo copy.

The U.S. version of this printer is not capable of printing directly to CD/DVD without a few tweaks. You can do a search and easily configure this printer to print directly onto discs. You will have to buy a disc tray to use this feature. You will also need to find yourself a disc label printing software program. Once you have everything you need, while set to the highest quality, it takes about one minute to complete and the quality is outstanding.

I had no problems setting up the printer to be used on my wired network. The software detected everything and required little input from me. Worth noting, to set the printer up on your network, you still need to connect the printer to your computer directly with a USB initially. Once set up, you can remove the USB cable.

I think the software bundle is outstanding. Besides the Canon utilities, you also receive ULead Video Studio 9 SE, Cool 3D and DVD MovieFactory 4. I prefer having the software options to choose from and deciding for myself if I want to use it or not.

The printer is a bit large, but closes up nicely and looks "clean" sitting on the desk. The paper output tray can remain closed in an upright position and will open automatically once a print job has started. At the base of the printer, completely hidden is the bottom paper cartridge. The plastic guide that holds the slides and negatives for scanning is hidden away under the lid of the scanner.

With electricity rates constantly rising, I must mention that this printer is Energy Star Compliant. I connected the printer to a wattage meter and found that while running idle, it consumes around 5-6 watts. When the printer goes into its power saving mode, wattage falls to under 1 watt. This makes it very reasonable to leave the printer on 24/7; which is important if you plan to use over a network.

My only negative with this printer is that I had a great deal of difficulty getting the printer initially installed. I am a computer technician and I have helped others with this problem, but I've never had this problem myself. I could not get the printer to install on my desktop computer. I blame this on Windows XP more than Canon, but after using all the tricks than I knew of, I never did get this installed on my desktop. My solution was, I had to install the printer on my notebook computer, then I installed the printer on my network and finally, the printer was detected on my desktop computer via network.

Once everything was up and running, I went to the Canon website to update the drivers. That was a mistake. The scanner was no longer accessible once the new drivers were installed. I had to uninstall the new drivers and re-install the original drivers from the CD again. In the end, everything is working, but what a job this was to get everything up and running.

I still highly recommend this printer as most people will not have the problems I did with the drivers. These things happen as I have helped many others with similar problems with various printers, but it is a rare occurrence and tends to be more of an XP configuration issue than a problem with the product.