Friend Barb’s son Andy, was kind enough to spend his morning carting me around on errands, on this my ‘free’ week (no daily radiation or chemo). On of the to-do items was to find a cheap printer for quick 8.5 x 11 prints, which happen surprisingly often around here (we being so ‘paperless‘).
We bought an inexpensive but very nice quality Canon ip6220D a couple weeks ago to replace our dead Epson Stylus 1270. The Canon cost a mere $80, but, after Linda ran a ream of straight text plain paper prints through it, it cost $60 to replace the dual ink cartridges – you can’t just replace the black.
So, off to Fry’s, and back comes another Canon, the MP 530. Separate ink tanks, and even the printer head stands alone – all you buy is black ink (or whatever) when you need it. So the ip6220D will become the photo printer, while the MP 530 now does the ‘office’ stuff – and copies (came in handy minutes after it was installed), scans (included auto-feeder) and faxes, too. I’m used to technology lowering prices while adding features, and I know ink sales subsidize the price but this is a very interesting machine. Tomorrow we’ll dig into some interesting config possibilities. It prints quickly, too…
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Hah ! Just as I’ve been looking to upgrade my aging HP CX990 & Epson 1250. I shall be very interested in your findings.
Over in the UK, Froogle shows me prices from 150 GBP to 250 GBP, which would be around 280 – 470 USD – good grief !! Even our lowest price is pounds-for-dollars, when at the xrate is should be about 80 GBP.
I believe it’s the same for Adobe software too – perhaps you could have a word …
good news about the walking – have a merry Christmas !!
Merry Christmas…! Review soon, as I get around to using it more…
Doh! I just bought the Canon Pixma MP830 for $250, but now I realize the MP530 would have suited my needs just fine for $100 less. The 830 adds, per CNET, “faster speeds, media card slots, and a preview LCD (for digital photo printing)”.
Oh well, the 830 is set up in my home office and seems to be working fine, so I’ll just write off the $100 as “poor research expense”.
The most interesting “nuance” was that Windows booted slowly when the Canon was on, but fine when the Canon was off. Turns out Windows was trying to boot from the Canon’s media slot (just in case Windows was there). I actually had to go into my BIOS and turn Dell’s “USB emulation” off. Yikes! But it’s fine now.
Of course ours is hitched to a Mac… very different software and functionality… still trying to see how I can configure for easiest use.
It does scan to PDF, but the interrface is not as elegant as our Snapscan… but it will scan things, like books, that don’t go in the Fujitsu.
Let’s compare notes when I get back in…
I have a 530…the most annoying thing is that there is a chip in each cartridge that forces you to buy their overpriced ink. You can buy the replacement cartidges from other places, but will be forced to remove the chip and place it on the new ink tank. This will cause the fax receive portion of the printer to not work. I would not recommend this printer to anyone.