Friday, January 15, 2010

Canon Pixma MP560 Update

As you'll know if you visit here regularly, I recently purchased this printer to replace my ageing HP Deskjet 940c, and my initial impressions were very positive.

Well I've had the device a week now, and I have to say it's been an absolute revelation to me. I'm struggling to find any fault whatsoever with it. If I had to be really picky, I'd say the draft or "Fast" mode text isn't quite as sharp as I'd like, but hey, it's draft, and for a lot of what I do, that's good enough - especially if it means using less ink. That's not to say fast mode isn't perfectly serviceable unless your printing something where you want high quality, deep, sharp blacks. It'll more than do for my cricket committee documents etc.

Having duplex printing is a revelation. So neat, and think of the paper I'm saving!

Photographic printing is near flawless on the sample Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II. It's a long time since I had any proper "camera film" developed anywhere, but I have to say the results from the MP560 on Canon photo paper are flawless as far as I can see. I'm truly gobsmacked by the quality, and may well end up printing more photos than I ever did with the Deskjet. Having said that, I've got some HP photo paper to use up, so it'll be interetsing to see if it's as good on it's rivals consumables.

One of the main reasons I wanted to change my printer was my Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard didn't support the HP unit. No such problem with the MP560. Connection is fine, drivers settings are all there, and performance is great whether printing from the MBP or either of my Windows 7 desktops.

Wireless performance is great too. The unit is sitting on the desk adjacent to the two Windows 7 desktops, so hardly a burden for wireless printing, but I've printed from downstairs (we've a fairly big house) on the MBP with absolutely no problems. Could put the printer in the spare room I suppose if I wanted more desktop space.

The scanning is equally good. The provided scanner driver provides plenty of fucntionality and settings to do what you want, including saving to PDF and having a "My Box" function to manage all your scanned images should you so wish. No problems on that front so far.

There's no OCR software provides, but I've got a copy of Omnipage Pro 14 lying about somewhere, but I haven't bothered to install it it. PDF's are what I want to create in the main.

So, all in all, I'm a very happy bunny, and thoroughly chuffed with my new all in one. I was originally looking at the MP640, which is A Listed on PC Pro's web site (always a decent recommendation). As far as I can see, the only real benefit it offers over the MP560 is CD/DVD printing, but as it would have cost me about £60 more, and I can't remember the last time I wanted to print a CD/DVD label, I think I've saved myself the money and got everything I needed anyway.

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