zakezuke said:
The i960, not really obsolete. the ip5000, that's on par with the
current generation, and from my understanding can be tweeked to accept
the new color inks.
My point was, you own one printer which has a current generation head,
and to boot a printer with the older generation head. You are in a
position to judge and give advice.
I somewhat less so, as my canon base is limited to the ip3000/mp760/
ip5200/mp830 and a few older models in the i series.
Measekite owns an ip4000 and that's it.
Canon does make it somewhat difficult for someone to jump into their
printers, looking for solid review when they change models almost on a
yearly basis.
Reminds me of a joke we used to tell in graduate school (actually no joke!)
that each year the professors kept the same answers but changed the
questions. Canon's upgrades are, more often than not, a yearly change in
the shape or color of the case. There may be some incremental changes in
nozzle numbers, etc, but you would be hard pressed to tell the difference
functionally. The major changes since I have been using Canon printers have
been one picoliter nozzles, duplexing and dual paper path (useless for my
needs), and the new inks which claim to have less fading. The upgrade that
is an absolute step backward is the chip on the cart. Forget about
aftermarket products for a moment - I see posts from people using these
printers with OEM original carts where the printer either doesn't recognize
the cart, sees it as a different color, or identifies it as empty when it is
as much as half full in the reservoir area.
The best buy in town at this point, as far as I can tell, is the ip4300
(probably pretty much equivalent to my ip5000) at Staples for $69. That
price may drop more as the ip4500 comes into the market place, but they may
then be very difficult to find. If anyone can find the deal on the ip4200
that I saw a few weeks ago @$40 they should jump on it if they want a decent
general purpose printer.
