photo printers

I have owned several "photo" or mixed-use ink jet printers (including a HP 2200 series I got last year), and this produces the best output by far - true photo-quality when printed on Canon's "Photo Paper Plus - Glossy". Like most printers, the output is much better when using the manufacture's own paper (as opposed to the cheaper generic paper), but there is no need to buy the most expensive "Pro" paper as neither I nor my wife could discern ANY difference between the two. There may be a benifit to the "Pro" paper that cannot be seen (lasts longer?) but at almost twice the cost it is not worth it.

The part I like the best about he printer is the ink tank system - it uses 6 individual tanks made of CLEAR plastic so you can confirm with your own eye they are empty when the printer tells you they are (there will be a little unusable amount in the "sponge" portion of the tank, but NONE in the main tank section). Because the tanks are just ink (no print head like in most HP and others) the price of new tanks is quite cheap (no need to risk the printer or the quality with refills or generic ink); and because there are 6 individual colors you only need to buy the color you ran out of, rather than buying a new "color" or "photo" tank like I have to do with my HP whenever one color goes out. You DO go through some colors a lot more than others - while it will vary depending on what you are printing, after printing out several hundred 8x10s I have gone through 3 "photocyan" tanks, 3 "photomagenta" tanks, 2 "cyan", one "magenta", one "yellow" and am still on my first tank of the other 2 colors. In ink savings alone, I have paid for this printer, and you feel MUCH better when you can pull out that little tank and confirm you really did go through the ink (I have often had my doubts).

If you print a lot of 4x6 snapshots, there is a seperate feeder for them that you can even leave in place while printing 8x10 sheets (or you can just lift it out if you want to load more 8x10 paper, as it cuts down the amount that can fit). I can't say how it would work with printing text documents, as I use it exclusively for photos.

And if you work on a Mac, it works Great with OSX.

I upgraded from my Epson Stylus 880 because of the $50 rebate Canon had when you purchase the i960 with a A70. The i960 offered a dual paper tray (4x6 photo and letter/legal/etc type paper) which is nice and also a much higher print quality.

Also the multi ink tanks are great for economy over having to toss a combo cartridge due to only one color dying, plus it has an easily replacable print head.

The printer is quiet even in non-quiet mode, prints quickly and accurately....I did a quick photo print and compared it to the original photo I scanned in and it was hard to tell which was which...

I would say this printer would be all anyone would ever need for home use, if high volume text is needed get a cheap monochrome laser. It also has a PICTBRIDGE port on the front panel if you have a digicam that supports it (I do but don't use it). I haven't played with all the features yet, but supposedly it can print directly on CD's and DVD's.

I am really happy with this purchase.

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I am very disappointed in the Cannon i960 printer. The printer head is very poorly designed. I had great difficulty getting the print head and ink cartridges to work. I had to reseat the printer head 5 times before it would work. I had to reseat the magenta ink cartridge 5 times before it would work. It took 4 hours of reading the manual to diagnose all the errors I was getting and running tests to get this printer where it would print a color picture. Our last printer was an HP 895cse. The HP was easy to set up and ran great for 3 years. I wish we had bought another HP. I am very disappointed in the quality of this printer.