xNokia3390x said:
WOW! Five whole years... That is just absolute proof of how good Canon's
printers are!
xnokia whatever, you are obviously not to be taken seriously in what
is supposed to be an non-biased conversation. You may have had some
bad experiences with your Canon printer(s) but in your last posts you
seem to have generalized them to a point of nonsense.
The first inkjet printer I owned was a small Canon BJ10ex. It was 12
years ago. It still works without problems, although cartridges are
expensive and hard to find. Very slow though, so I offered it as a
present to my nephew and went to buy an HP 2000C.
HP was so frantic about this printer, they even made a special website
for it:
www.hp2000c.com. The printer had separate ink carts, very fast
speed good paper handling. It sold (and was named as) a professional
printer. I bought one of them immediately and after 50 pages the
yellow ink was reported low. Absurd, there wasn't a single yellow
pixel in my prints. I joined the hp2000c.com forums to find out a
horde of users having problems with this expensive printer.
Apparently, HP had "invented" an utterly flawed system to count
remaining ink (a smartchip and a pumping shaft) that once it found a
cartridge to be out of ink it would burn information into the
smartchip and render the cartridge useless. There were people in the
forums who had horror stories to say about problematic pump shafts
which turned bunches of 4 carts to junk. I soon became part of these
stories.
The printer sucked and sucked and sucked money until I found out that
I had to replace my entire ink station. Costed about $100. Printed for
a few months without problems and then one fine day a window appeared
on my computer and informed me that this printer would no longer print
unless I replaced the magenta printhead. Amazing. Immediately I stored
the printer away and went to buy a new printer, a Canon i850. I went
to the store prepared to buy it but then I found an HP
multifunctional, PSC2115, which was priced as high as the Canon
printer and would offer photo printing option. So I got myself into HP
again.
First observation: The HP driver was a ridiculous 150MB installation
that's larger than my MS Office!!! Parts of the driver are written in
javascript and the HP applications feel like internet explorer. I
didn't have an option to prevent the HP imaging software from getting
on my computer. This was disgusting.
I returned the first PSC2115 in 2 days after discovering that it would
produce white streaks when photocopying (it would print normally
though).
I returned the second one after removing the black cartridge for
replacement and the printer tried to force the cartidges back to the
station. Essentially, the printer broke itself!
The third one worked for some time and I was glad to find that I could
refill those 56, 57 and the photo 58 cartridges quite easily.
Unfortunately, after a few months the printer would miss lines and a
month after the 1 year warranty the printer stopped in the middle of a
printjob making a horrible noise. It was a carriage jam and was
repeated many times in the days to come. One day I left it printing
and returned to find it jammed, both printheads dried. I opened the
printer and I discovered that it was an extremely complex device
relying on a plastic disc with black marks passing through an optical
sensor for roller calibration. The disc was dirty and the black marks
a bit scratched and that explained my missing lines.
A second HP printer now adores my storeroom.
I was determined that I would not make the same mistake again and
searched the web for a Canon printer. I found the new PIXMA
multifunctionals which offer all the things I need. U-feeding,
CD-printing, two-side printing and reportedly good speed. They also
use separate carts, a long forgotten feature of my old 2000C. I
searched the web a little more and I found that Canon is doing it
RIGHT. No smartchips, no pump-shafts. Just a simple optical sensor.
Unfortunately these new products have not yet arrived in my country
(expected this month). But I needed a printer, so I went to the store
and purchased a cheapo HP in order to finish my remaining unopened HP
cartridges when the pixmas would arrive.
To my amazement this cheapo multifunctional (PSC1210) works well.
Although it shares the same silly driver with PSC 2115 (apparently HP
is supplying this bloat to all its imaging devices), I've inspected
the mechanism and it seems HP is using a much more simple mechanism
for this line of printers. Of _course_ it's cheapo and slow and not
photo, of _course_ I am going to buy the new Canon when it comes, but
this HP will probably turn to be a good gift to my parents.
My experience with HP is that
1) It is not what it used to be. HP products used to be american
products with all the virtues of american products: strong build, good
support, quality software. Today's HP seems to have outsourced
everything to Asia: neither hardware, nor support not even software
seem to come from experienced US engineers. They all seem to share the
cheapo feel of many Chinese or Pakistani products.
2) HP is a good purchase if you are going for cheapo. People who print
less than 30 pages per month should definitely buy an HP, it will last
for many years and cartridges are easy to find.
3) If you are in serious need of printing you should avoid HP inkjets.
