Canon MP620 Wireless AllinOne Photo Printer

5 STARS WITH A COUPLE OF CAVEATS…
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
…

First let me thank AMAZON and the AMAZON COMMUNITY for helping me get into this excellent product at such a low cost.

Like most people using PC’s, I have gone thru the initial and continued frustrations of purchasing & maintaining home and/or small office printers/scanners/copiers. But keeping things in proper perspective, I can remember being invited to a demonstration of a “new” concept called “desktop publishing” that was hosted by a firm in Charleston, SC back in the early 80′s. They had a lot of really whiz-bang stuff that would indeed allow an individual to publish some pretty nice stuff right from a desktop computer set-up…

…but did I mention that all of the peripherals took up the better part of a standard-sized room and the entire outfit cost about 30K!?

Of course, having seen that demo, at that point in time, I began to somewhat keenly, if conservatively, keep up with the technology without taking the heavy economic hits of being an “early adopter” of any given great advance in computer technology.

So for the rest of you out there who have a similar strategy, let me say that, IMO, with this product, wireless printing – which I now view as a lifestyle necessity – has arrived.

MOVING ON FROM HP…

About ten years ago, after trying several brands of printers, we became a HP household and the machines we will be replacing with the Canon products [this one and the MP490 probably] were the PSC 1200/1300 series of all-in-ones. Overall those machines served us well but I found the OEM ink to be too expensive and the aftermarket ink to be unsatisfactory. Additionally, HP seemed to get greedier and greedier and their software more and more intrusive. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when they somehow managed to do an automatic update on me and it completely changed the interface for the OCR function, –throwing me into the decision of either learning the new OCR interface or moving on from HP; –which I am doing.

And largely because I want to have a much less intrusive, and streamlined, relationship with my printer/copier/scanner, while preserving the excellent functionality I have come to expect, the Canon line of wi-fi machines is where I am headed. Indeed, I can now do for 400-500 dollars and a lot less hassle what had cost 30K in 1983-4! Thanks Canon!

THE CAVEATS:

OWNER/INSTALLATION MANUALS NEED IMPROVING AND I HAD TO USE A USB CABLE TO GET THE PRIMARY MACHINE FUNCTIONING WITH THE ALL-IN-ONE.

–I could not get the unit installed on my primary machine without hooking up a USB cable. Maybe it could be done but I wasn’t able to decipher the rather extensive and, IMO, sometimes contradictory instructions. However, the sailing was pretty smooth once I swallowed my pride and went to the USB method and the machine – and our other two Windows XP Pro machines – one a laptop and the other a desktop – have functioned flawlessly wirelessly so far.

–The installation CD ROM walks you thru setup on the additional machines on your network quite easily.

Hope this helps someone out in their buying decision; thanks again to Amazon and their “back-fence” crowd who help making wise buying decisions a pleasure.

A final note: while I am very pleased with this product and enthusiastic about Canon’s product line, if they become abusive of our relationship I will be back at Amazon [or Amazon's competition] finding out who delivers and who doesn’t.

Canon MP620 Wireless all-in-one sweetness
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
First off, I used to have the old Canon S900 which was a great photo printer that worked for over 3 years flawlessly, except when the heads weren’t used periodically, but that’s an inkjet issue with all printers. the MP620 is easy to setup. If you setup the wirless portion, I highly suggest you using the manual as I tried to set it up without it and was totally frustrated as it would not work. There are special programming things that need to be done through the installation disc. At any rate, this printer is solid. It doesn’t hold a lot of paper, but it’s small so I don’t expect it to. The fact that it can print/scan and photo copy makes it the perfect home/office product. I printed some great photos and also made some great b&w documents. You’re never going to get this to print like a laser, so I can’t compare it to that. The ink is a little expensive, but you can always buy generic or go to staples and get coupons. They also take Canon OEM cartridges and give you $3 for each cartridge. At any rate, this this works great and my mother-in-law and brother-in-law and my own parents now own one!