My earlier Hp deskjet 630c served me for over 3 yrs with few breakdowns and then. The time for an upgrade had come and I spent quite some time in the net and off the net searching for some gud stuff. Canon’s PIXMA range of bubblejet printers were a league different from the other Canon printers. DIGIT magazine had a product review and I had no doubts about which one to choose. I got it in Secunderabad for Rs.2300/- and alongwith the printer came as usual two catridges black and color, a cd and a manual. Installation is very very easy provided you follow the instructions carefully. We have to assemble the catridge head and the catridges ourselves, so a little bit of patience and care is required. But once installation is complete, printing is really fast and so is the plethora of options. Having got used to the hp printer the options given here are more and useful too. It comes with softwares such as ’’Easy-Webprint’’ and ’’Easy Photo print’’. The former is very usefu for printing web pages straight out of the browser. Coming to the cons..not many but the noise while printing and preparing for printing is pretty much high, you get an impression of some damage in the printer. Next is the problem of canon’s printers print head failure. heard a lot about it but lets see if it keeps up the legacy of canon’s head problem. Last problem is that there is no online registration of the printer (neither there is offline...but) that means there is no warranty extension blah..blah...Hp beats Canon here completly. Now that I’ve compared hp with Canon, a place where Canon beats hp black’n’color is in the catridge cost, meaning the overall running cost and cost-per-page factor. Canon’s original print catridges are available from net @ Rs.395 and Rs.595 for black and color respectively whereas hp’s original cost Rs.1300 and Rs.1600 respectively. Canon’s compatible catridges cost around Rs.100 so for those who don’t want to spend even that 500s there’s an easy way out. Overall the performance is good but reliability will be tested in the next one year. till then keep waitin...forgot it prints photos with relative ease and is very good at that it seems.
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Ok this is an update. Now that its been nearly 6 months since I bought this printer. It works great. Just great. Except for..... I have replaced the Black catridge twice till now!! Twice in 6 months!! Reason?? The catridges have a measly 8ml capacity!!! Man thats unfair!!! Color catridge ran out once.. so replaced it once...with a compatible catridge... so the original costs 595 bucks. Can’t afford right now. Though the prints seem fairly normal. Ownership satisfaction: 89%. I’d still recommend it.