pixma

Canon PIXMA MX330 Inkjet All-In-One Printer
$129.97
I've really enjoyed this printer so far. It's has a simple display and the buttons are intuitive. I've never had any trouble with the drivers on my Mac. I love the autofeeder. It's been a godsend at times. I haven't used the fax machine, but who uses fax on a landline now anyways. Ink is an issue as this is an inkjet printer and not a laser. However, if you buy generic cartridges on ebay, you shouldn't spend more than a few dollars a cartridge. I love this printer!

Canon PIXMA MX700 Office All-On-One Inkjet Printer
$199.99
Love it but sometimes I have a problem doing things I have done on it for a while but thats me not the printer. I Have a friend that has one to we both love it . It does real good one ink he just replaced his color ink after one year, now the black we both had to replace after about 6 months. The ink is not real expensive but you have to use canon ink the off brands will mess it up. I have had mine for about 6 months and my friend one year.

Canon CLI-221 4-Color Value Pack (Black/Cyan/Magenta/Yellow) (2946B004)
$47.99
This printer is extremely slow. It is difficult to load with paper and it runs out of ink faster than any printer that I have ever owned. I do not recommend purchasing.

Canon PIXMA MP990 Wireless Inkjet Photo All-In-One Printer (3749B002)
$299.99
This is my first review of the Canon PIXMA MP990. On first look you kind of get the feeling your looking at a small tank and it feels like it when you lift it up. The setup was easy thought at first it was a little daunting to see all those ink cartridges and a print head to put in. The print head went right in and was easy, just slid in and secure with a lever. It took a few minuets to make sure each ink cartridge was in the correct slot and seated correctly so the light on the end came on. The one place things could go wrong here is a piece of plastic that twist that covers the ink port on the cartridge that might break in the wrong way if you don't follow directions. The one Doh!! moment I had was when I turned it on it kept indicating a door was open and I just couldn't see it at first. There's a very small door inside the print just under the printer platen that must have pulled down when I was taking all the tape used to secure the printer. So then it was all set up and I turned it on. It whirred away for awhile priming the print head and going through multiple diagnostics till it was ready. It had some special paper just for the setup that almost felt like thin cardboard that it used for the test print, they have some special instructions for it in the documentation.

I've got mine set up so my XP machine is connected with a USB connection and I have a WiFi connection to my Vista Laptop down stairs. I don't have my router password protected (shame on me!!!) so it wasn't much of a test setting it up to connect the laptop to it. You do have some special software you need to load on the remote machines so it can see the printer and also scan to it but that wasn't any issue setting up.

So far I haven't really done much printing on this machine put I have noticed that only after printing a manual of around 60 pages, one 8 by 11 B/W photo, and a couple of smaller 4 by 5's that the colored ink is already down by a quarter so I'm guessing it uses up ink fairly fast, time will tell. The black ink so far is showing no usage. So I can't say much about usage but the color of the photos is very good using both the Canon paper and some cheaper photo paper I have.

For the scanner so far I am very impressed. Looking at the build quality through the glass you can see that the scan head runs on two steel rods while most other multi printers I've taken apart just run on a plastic track built into the floor of the scanner. I do highly recommend that you use the Mp Navigator EX that comes with the software. I'm not sure if it was just the old Paint Shop Pro 8 software I was using or you can only see the higher scan settings in the EX software but I could only see 1200dpi in the Paint Shop software and I can see 4800dpi using the EX software. For color photos it looks like 600dpi is as high as I can get while with slides and negatives you can go up to the 4800dpi. So I guess if you want to do 1200dpi for photos you would have to use a separate software. It does though recognize the edges of the photos and will scan them separately. Using the special setup for the slides was a little puzzling even with a diagram as it took me awhile to realize I just had to take the film holder out and lay the rest of the holder back on the platen matching up the hole with the pin on the side of the platen. There is a separate lighted platen under the large while backing that comes off that lights up when you tell it you are using negatives or slides. I was amazed at the scan at 1200dpi how well one of the larger 35 millimeter slides came out. I printer it and it looked like a regular photo. I even took a magnifying glass to it and could hardly see any pixelation.

Well that's about all I can think of right now, I'll try and keep this updated as I use things or any issues come up.