Took the plunge on a Canon All in One....

**cabinetman** · 11-12-2009, 02:14 AM

I can't get over the idea of the refill ink costing as much or more than the machine. Some of those you could get for free, and their profit is the ink.

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**phrog** · 11-12-2009, 08:14 AM

I don't have this particular unit but have had a Canon Pixma printer for several years. I can tell you that after using most brands on the market I will probably never buy anything other than Canon. The ink consumption is far LESS than any of the other brands. Mine has separate color cartridges which means that you don't throw away a lot of unused ink by replacing a single color cartridge. I use the duplex mode constantly and find this to be a paper saver. The per ml cost of the ink is LESS than other brands such as Epson and HP. I can think of nothing negative about my Canon. One word of caution: I have read many horror stories about using ink refills. The users often make a mess and the refills sometimes don't work properly with the printer. I accidentally destroyed a Xerox printer by refilling my own cartridges. Everything looked okay but a couple weeks later the printer acted up and I found the cartridges had leaked inside. Eventually had to throw it away.
Richard

**radhak** · 11-12-2009, 09:20 AM

I bought the Pixma mp530 2 years ago, and have been very happy by all its functionalities. It doesn't have duplex scanning, but only duplex printing. Photo printing is top notch and text is sharp enough for home prints. And I paid around $200 for it!

All that said, I still grabbed the opportunity to buy a b/w Laser printer (a Brother ) from CL for $50 NIB. Staples was selling it at $99 at that time and I was ready for that too. Reason? Ink.

I noticed that despite being a very conservative (miserly) family when it came to printing, I needed to buy replacement cartridges every 6 months. I wish I had kept accurate track of what we printed, but it was usually not more than a couple of pages a week, most of it b/w. So, be generous and say 100 pages in 6 months, then add some for buffer : 150 pages for one set of cartridges seemed to me to be a bit much.

The originals cost around $50 for a set; I got lucky and found www.OCInkjet.com who give me 'compatibles' for half the price and they have worked wonderfully for me (shall be ordering my 4th replacement this week). Might be cheaper than others, but the Laser has been an eyeopener. It came with a cartridge which promises 1200-1500 pages of print and would cost around $50 for a replacement; have yet to run out, even though we are far more free now in our printouts! And the quality of print is outstanding!

So, my twocentsworth : the printer is great, but I'd suggest keep it for colors; for b/w, get a cheap laser from CL and you'd be a very happy person!

edit : and oh, that is a great deal <enviously said>...

**tseavoy** · 11-12-2009, 09:43 AM

Maybe my next printer will be a Canon. The software that comes with the HP printers is terrible, especially on my wife's printer which is an all in one type. The software is geared to make you use more HP photopaper and ink. The hard drive is full of hp**** files. What ever happened to drivers you could load using a floppy?

Tom on Marrowstone

**herb fellows** · 11-12-2009, 11:55 AM

Well, it looks like experience is all over the place here.
I have the Canon Pixma 500 about 3 years now. The machine is fine but I have nothing to compare it to for ink consumption. However, I am not a happy camper. i have it set to greyscale, only use color very rarely. The problem I think is that it uses the ink to clean the heads. I found myself buying 5 tanks for $40-50 every 3 months or less!
The sneaky thing that Canon does is they have a computer chip on the cartridge; without it, no worky!
I tried some replacement cheapies where you had to take the chip off the old cartridge and 'glue' it onto the new one; good luck with that operation!
Finally, I found decent replacement cartridges with the chip, and the machine accepts them just fine.
I got them on ebay from 'inkmarts', 15 cartridges for $37. That's 3 full refills of each, which would cost me at least $120 buying original Canon product. A happy camper once again!

**chopnhack** · 11-12-2009, 07:04 PM

That was the disturbing thing to me Herb, the constant use of color inks to do grey scale. But Canon is using it as a business model to make money. I don't agree with it, but apparently there are ways around it

I'll keep you all posted when I get it in around a week. I don't do a whole lot of printing, but I do need the scanning feature and the fax capabilities will be nice as well.

**LCHIEN** · 11-12-2009, 09:50 PM

I bought a Brother Laser for B&W, and I send all my photo printing to Walgreens 1/4 mile from my house. I seldom turn on the ink jet any more, so its probably dried out and will cost me $60 to re-ink it. Or 30 for non-HP off brands.

The laser is so reliable and economical, its ridiculous to compare. Someday I'll get a laser color printer.

I'm still using my HP Scanjet II which was $800 new in about 1995 and one of the original flat bed scanners. Love to get a multi-sheet feeder some day to scan articles.

**catta12** · 11-12-2009, 10:44 PM

Originally posted by chopnhack

So..... anyone have experience with this unit? I really liked the fact that it can auto duplex scan, which means I can organize the office digitally.....(finally). What are your thoughts?

Warning Gloat coming.......
Do not read if you are easily irritated

I have an MP530 that I use wirelessly with a DPR-1260 (Dlink Print Server). I have used this setup for a couple of years and everything works fine. For ink, I use InkFarm.com. They are reasonably priced and the inks work great. It looks like they cover your model too: http://www.inkfarm.com/products/cart...idth=notnarrow

**chopnhack** · 11-13-2009, 08:21 AM

Thanks for the link Alan, I will keep them in mind in case the other folks ink doesn't work as well.

Took the plunge on a Canon All in One....

Took the plunge on a Canon All in One....

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