igloo 3 Posted January 9, 2007 Share Posted January 9, 2007 Got that one myself and like it. There certainly is no need to go any higher if you are not into photos and the like. Link to post Share on other sites
taguchi 0 Posted January 10, 2007 Share Posted January 10, 2007 I have canon printer from last year and very satisfied with it. I think I always had Canon, they have good reputation. I remember when I got my first printer. I thought it was amazing, so exciting. Now printers are hardly exciting thing! Link to post Share on other sites
thursday 1 Posted January 10, 2007 Share Posted January 10, 2007 taguchi, I think the only exciting things about printers these days is their ability to print at photo quality. A few years back I predicted these would supercede the photo print shops but due to the price of the media, this has not happened. Link to post Share on other sites
TheOrange 0 Posted January 11, 2007 Share Posted January 11, 2007 Definitely. It's still expensive and I still find it a hassle. My friend owns a photo shop though and says that hardly anyone is using films now - and his business has taken a big hit over the last few years. But lots of people still like to take their memory cards to him to print out. Link to post Share on other sites
thursday 1 Posted January 11, 2007 Share Posted January 11, 2007 I stopped using film about a year ago. Still got my old SLR, can't bring myself to get rid of it. The print shop now prints my digitals for less than my film prints. It used to be twice as expensive. Link to post Share on other sites
Curt 1 Posted January 16, 2007 Author Share Posted January 16, 2007 Thanks folks. I went with the Canon 600 in the end, got a good deal on it. Still in the process of getting used to it but seems good Link to post Share on other sites
Tesselator 0 Posted February 8, 2007 Share Posted February 8, 2007 I see you already got the 600 but what the heck, someone might be interested in a low-down on this puppy. The PIXUS MP810 (not to be confused with the PIXMA MP810) is the fastest printer of the common pack. Meaning all the Epson's , HP's and Canon's that one sees in the bigger electronic shops here in Japan. Print quality is great but aren't they all about the same? I mean they all look like photographs to me - even with a magnifying glass - which I did actually take to the store with me to examine the output of eash of the models I was interested in. If you use the Canon ink and the canon paper and print in "fine" mode canon says that the prints will last 100 years in a photo-album on your shelf, 30 years in a glass covered picture frame and 10 years pinned to a cork-bord and still retain all of the color and detail as it came out of the printer. Canon doesn't say but I would guess you only have weeks or months if you print to plain paper - as you might expect. Also it has one of the cheepest per-page printing costs. But not all that much different from just taking your memory card down to a discount one-hour photo shop. ~20 yen a photo. If you use double sided paper it can print to both sides of the page without intervention. I haven't tried that feature yet though. It has some nice candy functions in firmware - like being able to scan 4 roughly placed photographs and straighten them out automatically printing copies of each individually simply by pressing a button. It scans negs and positives but ONLY 35mm - which is SAD! No MRI scaning, no 110, 220, or medium format film scanning is possible. The scanner itself seems fast unless you are scanning 35mm film and then it's the slowest thing on earth. It can take up to 30min to scan one 35mm strip. An A4 photocopy scan takes only about 5 seconds for the scanner part to complete. It's missing some imortant paper format options as well. For example you cannont copy or scan TO a B5 page size - yet you can print to one (B5 page) from a computer. It has a memory card reader that you can print from. A USB connected computer can read and write to the memory card like an HD but if the card is not in READ-ONLY mode the printer cannot print from it. You set READ-ONLY or READ-WRITE mode from a menu option on the printer. Also for some reason there is no way to scan TO the memory card. It prints to DVD/CD surface but you have to make your own template. The ones that come with the install CD don't seem to print correctly in any application including the canon CD print app that it comes with. Not too big a deal tho... Just get the dimentions from the print dialogue and do some trial and eror testing to place the circular area in the right place. It has USB and BlueTooth interfaces on the front for printing from a phone or directly from a connected camera. Unfortunatly nothing else works with those ports tho. So if you want to print from say, a USB memory-stick... forget it. Likewise I doubt you could print directly in any way from an iPod or a PSP etc. All in all I would say that this device in one of the better all-in-one machines seen commonly in the shops. Parts and suplies are available all over the place too so that's something to consider. The only device that might be a little better at every turn is the new Kodak all-in-one EasyShare 5500. It has every advantage listed above 100year photo colors, the lot. But also has Fax capability, a Scanner sheet feeder, is $100 cheeper, and has a cheeper per-page print cost. Like 30% less overall. Where to find ink and what paper to buy I don't know though. Link to post Share on other sites
k3 0 Posted February 10, 2007 Share Posted February 10, 2007 Good response Tesselator. I have the 600 and really happy with it - actually started doing things that I didn't intend to like printing CDs and covers and the like. Only one case but my father had an EasyShare and I didn't like the software that came with that and it put me off the Kodak machines. Link to post Share on other sites
me jane 0 Posted February 12, 2007 Share Posted February 12, 2007 I've got a Canon and after printing a load of photos it started to print everything in purple (think greyscale but purple). Had a look online and saw that quite a lot of people were having the same problem but I didn't find any answers. I might go for HP next as my old HP lasted for years. Link to post Share on other sites
Wizz 11 Posted February 13, 2007 Share Posted February 13, 2007 I have a HP and have had it for 4 years now - still going strong and had no problems at all. Link to post Share on other sites
Tesselator 0 Posted February 14, 2007 Share Posted February 14, 2007 I personally think that the differences between Canon, Epson, and HP are so minute that it may not even be worth the time to research it. Sure, I wrote the review above sayinng that the MP810 pulls ahead slightly in every category but it really IS vre slight! We're talking 5 seconds slower per print (manufacture estimate), a few yen different per print prince (again manufacturer estimate), and etc. I can't stress enough how thier output all looks so similar that I believe human eyes can't tell the difference. Jane has a really good point in that regard. If they are all so similar then things like the warrentee, and the convienience features in the firmware and software driver are probably more important to think about when you go to plop down the bucks - err, uhh, yen. Link to post Share on other sites
fukdane 2 Posted February 20, 2007 Share Posted February 20, 2007 Good point Tesselator. Do any of the printers now give you software in English? I'd really like to have that. Link to post Share on other sites
Tesselator 0 Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 Yeah, all the Canon one's will let you select English as the panel language and you can get English drivers for them. Epson is region based and not selectable and I dunno about HP or Kodak but I think I remember reading the Kodak was the same case as Canon. I kinda found it odd that Epson would not have language selection available. I remember when I wrote the manual for the Epson GT4000 that they were very intense about having that manual available and properly laid out in 7 different languages. -- Do you know what a headache it is to have your text translated into 7 languages you're not fluent in and then have to check the grammar, syntax, and spelling - plus conform to a layout that is natively understood/accepted? Man! Word by word by f*****g word. Link to post Share on other sites
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