G
Greg Kamer
Just picked up my new Canon i960 today. Had read a lot of reviews of
different photo printers, and decided to go with this. What follows is my
personal review:
Purchased from CompUSA cost was $199.99(US)
What comes in the box:
Printer
Printer Head
Power Cord
Driver/Software CD
User Manual
A packet (5 sheets) of Canon Photo Paper Plus (4X6)
6 ink cartridges
Paper Adapter (More on this later)
(Note: This printer comes in USB format only, cable NOT included, so you
must make sure you buy a USB cable.)
Set Up:
Fairly easy. This thing had shipping tape all over, so you really gotta look
to make sure you get them all off. Once you remove all the shipping tape,
you attach the power cord, plug it in and turn the printer on. This will
move the mount for the ink cratridges and printer head to the middle of the
access cover.
Carefully remove the printer head and insert it. It will only fit in, in one
way, so you can't accidently put it in backwards. Then you snap this litle
handle down to lock it in place.
Next, remove the safety tape and plastic from each ink cartridge and insert
them. The cartridge tray is marked, so you know what cartridge goes where.
Once you have the priner head and ink cartridges installed, you turn of
printer off. Connect the USB cable to the back of the printer, and to a USB
port on your computer. It comes with both USB 1.1 and high speed USB 2.0.
Insert the driver CD and install the drivers. You will also have a host of
additional software you can install. I installed all the options, but so far
have only used the Easy Photo Print software on my test prints.
You than have to do an automatic printer head alignment., It will print out
a test sheet with colored boxes on it. You set the alignment according to
how well the boxes look. Not as complicated as it sounds. Once that is done,
your ready to go.
Paper Adapter:
The printer comes with an adapter that fits over the paper feed slot. Into
this adapter, you can insert up to 20 sheets of 4X6 photo paper. You can
then place up to 150 sheets of plain paper into the feed tray as well. The
adpater has a knob on it marked Print/Remove. If you want to pint to plain
paper (text documents for example) turn the knob to Remove. This lifts the
adpater up and out of the feed tray. To print to 4X6 photo paper, turn the
knob to Print. This lowers the adpater down into the feed tray and will feed
only the photo paper.
This is a very quiet printer. But it blazes through 4X6 prints. I timed mine
at about 36-38 seconds per print.
Quality? What can I say...... I scanned a picture into my computer, than
printed a 4X6 photo. Compared it to the original and I was hard pressed to
tell which came from the photo lab and which came from the printer.
There is a setting in the Printer Perferences that allows you to set Auto
Power On/Off. This will autmatically turn the printer off after a predefined
time. Once a print command is sent to the printer, it turns on again. There
is also a setting for Quiet Mode. I enabeled this, and after the initial
sound of the paper loading, I have to put my hand on the printer to confirm
it is doing anything, it runs that quietly....
Easy Photo Print software:
This is the main printing software that comes with the printer. It allows
you to select images to be printed. From within the software, you can access
the set up information, allowing you to select type of paper, size, date,
and a whole slew of other information.
The Date option kind of threw me at first. This option lets you print a date
on the photo. The first few I tried this out on, showed a date from Sept 11,
1999. It took me a while to figure out that since these were digital images,
it was displaying the date the image was taken. When I tried it on scans of
photographs, it showed todays date. But you don't have to print a date on
the photo if you don't want it.
Another thing I found out is that if you have a lot of images in the folder,
it will let you print 20, 48 or 80 image index sheets, sometimes called
contact sheets.
Another nice thing with the software..... Each image in the folder is
displayed in a thumbnail version. Under each image are up/down arrow keys.
This sets the number of copies of each image to print. So if you have 50
images in a folder, but you only want to print 6 of them, you use the up
arrow key to set the number to 1 under each image you want to print. Set all
the others to zero. Only those images with a number will be printed, with
the number you select determining the number of copies of each image.
So, if you have 50 images in the folder, and you only want to print images
numbers 4, 23, 36 and 48, first click the Clear All button. This sets all
images to zero. Then up arrow images 4, 23, 36 and 48 to the number of
copies of each you want to print. Very easy.....
different photo printers, and decided to go with this. What follows is my
personal review:
Purchased from CompUSA cost was $199.99(US)
What comes in the box:
Printer
Printer Head
Power Cord
Driver/Software CD
User Manual
A packet (5 sheets) of Canon Photo Paper Plus (4X6)
6 ink cartridges
Paper Adapter (More on this later)
(Note: This printer comes in USB format only, cable NOT included, so you
must make sure you buy a USB cable.)
Set Up:
Fairly easy. This thing had shipping tape all over, so you really gotta look
to make sure you get them all off. Once you remove all the shipping tape,
you attach the power cord, plug it in and turn the printer on. This will
move the mount for the ink cratridges and printer head to the middle of the
access cover.
Carefully remove the printer head and insert it. It will only fit in, in one
way, so you can't accidently put it in backwards. Then you snap this litle
handle down to lock it in place.
Next, remove the safety tape and plastic from each ink cartridge and insert
them. The cartridge tray is marked, so you know what cartridge goes where.
Once you have the priner head and ink cartridges installed, you turn of
printer off. Connect the USB cable to the back of the printer, and to a USB
port on your computer. It comes with both USB 1.1 and high speed USB 2.0.
Insert the driver CD and install the drivers. You will also have a host of
additional software you can install. I installed all the options, but so far
have only used the Easy Photo Print software on my test prints.
You than have to do an automatic printer head alignment., It will print out
a test sheet with colored boxes on it. You set the alignment according to
how well the boxes look. Not as complicated as it sounds. Once that is done,
your ready to go.
Paper Adapter:
The printer comes with an adapter that fits over the paper feed slot. Into
this adapter, you can insert up to 20 sheets of 4X6 photo paper. You can
then place up to 150 sheets of plain paper into the feed tray as well. The
adpater has a knob on it marked Print/Remove. If you want to pint to plain
paper (text documents for example) turn the knob to Remove. This lifts the
adpater up and out of the feed tray. To print to 4X6 photo paper, turn the
knob to Print. This lowers the adpater down into the feed tray and will feed
only the photo paper.
This is a very quiet printer. But it blazes through 4X6 prints. I timed mine
at about 36-38 seconds per print.
Quality? What can I say...... I scanned a picture into my computer, than
printed a 4X6 photo. Compared it to the original and I was hard pressed to
tell which came from the photo lab and which came from the printer.
There is a setting in the Printer Perferences that allows you to set Auto
Power On/Off. This will autmatically turn the printer off after a predefined
time. Once a print command is sent to the printer, it turns on again. There
is also a setting for Quiet Mode. I enabeled this, and after the initial
sound of the paper loading, I have to put my hand on the printer to confirm
it is doing anything, it runs that quietly....
Easy Photo Print software:
This is the main printing software that comes with the printer. It allows
you to select images to be printed. From within the software, you can access
the set up information, allowing you to select type of paper, size, date,
and a whole slew of other information.
The Date option kind of threw me at first. This option lets you print a date
on the photo. The first few I tried this out on, showed a date from Sept 11,
1999. It took me a while to figure out that since these were digital images,
it was displaying the date the image was taken. When I tried it on scans of
photographs, it showed todays date. But you don't have to print a date on
the photo if you don't want it.
Another thing I found out is that if you have a lot of images in the folder,
it will let you print 20, 48 or 80 image index sheets, sometimes called
contact sheets.
Another nice thing with the software..... Each image in the folder is
displayed in a thumbnail version. Under each image are up/down arrow keys.
This sets the number of copies of each image to print. So if you have 50
images in a folder, but you only want to print 6 of them, you use the up
arrow key to set the number to 1 under each image you want to print. Set all
the others to zero. Only those images with a number will be printed, with
the number you select determining the number of copies of each image.
So, if you have 50 images in the folder, and you only want to print images
numbers 4, 23, 36 and 48, first click the Clear All button. This sets all
images to zero. Then up arrow images 4, 23, 36 and 48 to the number of
copies of each you want to print. Very easy.....
