[Mastrap]

There were a couple of threads going on in here recently about what inkjet printer to buy.

I finally replaced my ageing Epson 750 Photo. I sold a lot of old Mac equipment on ebay and it was part of a bundle that went to a new home.

I needed a good printer for home use only, 90% letters and documents with the occasional image being printed. Reading through various threads on macnn there seemed to be a consensus about Canon products being a worthwhile investment. I dithered for a while between the i950 and the i850 but I finally found the i850 at a good price online and ordered it there and then.

I'm extremely happy with it. The driver appears to be well written and is working flawlessly in 10.2.6. Text printing is nearly laser quality, very nice indeed. Ink tanks are large, with the black tank almost double the size of the colour ones. Someone thought about how people were most likely to use the product, excellent. All tanks can be exchanged individually. Image quality when printing on good photo paper is more than acceptable for me, although not quite as good as with the i950.

The only thing that took a bit of work was the manual printhead adjustment. I did find however that the default settings were ok.
All in all a great little printer for the home. Looks nice, works fine. And Canon throws in a CD containing their OS X software suite for free. SO now I am the owner not only of PhotoStitch but also of ImageBrowser which outperforms iPhoto by a huge margin IMO.

Gripes: No USB cable included. Like a muppet I sold mine with the old Epson.

[itai195]

Other great features: auto-off and on, VERY speedy text printing, and very low ink consumption. I agree, I've been very pleased with my i850 and I've had it for about 5 months now. I've printed nearly 60 photos and haven't had to replace any ink tanks. I do find that using higher quality photo paper makes a BIG difference. I haven't had a chance to try out Canon's 8x10 pro photo paper, but I did compare some decent Epson photo paper to some high quality Kodak paper, and the Kodak produced much better results. Canon's pro photo paper may be even better...

[bstieritz]

I agree with all that has been said above.

Have had my Canon i850 for nearly a month now and love it. Solid build, nice features, beautiful photo and document printing and quality drivers.

Typical Canon product if you ask me.


cheers,
brian


PS: Canon is the only printer manufacturer that I know of that includes a FULL ink cartridge with all their printers . . . other companies :coughs: (hp) have been shipping their printers with only half-full cartridges. psh. wtf?

[DigitalEl]

All in all a great little printer for the home. Looks nice, works fine. And Canon throws in a CD containing their OS X software suite for free.

I must've missed something. I bought an i850 just about a month ago, from an Apple brick and mortar, no less (Hey, I needed it that day)... And it only had Windows and OS 9 drivers on the disc. The manual even said for OS X software, you have to go to Canon.com and download the drivers. I was PO'd that I bought something from the Apple Store and still felt like a second-class citizen with the out of box experience.

That aside, I agree with all the above. It's the best printer I've ever owned. Says what it does. Does what it says. Everything I need and more!

Edit to add: There's more in this thread.

[mindwaves]

Originally posted by bstieritz:
I agree with all that has been said above.

Have had my Canon i850 for nearly a month now and love it. Solid build, nice features, beautiful photo and document printing and quality drivers.

Typical Canon product if you ask me.


cheers,
brian


PS: Canon is the only printer manufacturer that I know of that includes a FULL ink cartridge with all their printers . . . other companies :coughs: (hp) have been shipping their printers with only half-full cartridges. psh. wtf?

Never used a Canon on my Mac, but my Epson 740i works like a charm. The only annoying thing that it takes a while for it "to wake up" after it hasn't been in use for a while (i.e. 2 days or so). But yeah, Epson at least on my 740i and my parents SP 850 (I think) included both a full color and black cartridge. Will look into a Canon next time though!

[bstieritz]

Originally posted by DigitalEl:

I bought an i850 just about a month ago, And it only had Windows and OS 9 drivers on the disc. The manual even said for OS X software, you have to go to Canon.com and download the drivers. I was PO'd that I bought something from the Apple Store and still felt like a second-class citizen with the out of box experience.

Edit to add: There's more in this thread. [/B]

Digital,

I agree with you on the OS X driver disc not being included with the printer . . . sort of left a sour taste in my mouth.

However, the printer's quality was redeeming so, I'm over it now.


cheers,
brian

[Mastrap]

That's interesting. I bought mine in Germany and not only did it come with a full driver install CD (9 and X, as well as Windows) but also with an additional disk containing all Canon graphic apps. Considering Canon charges about $20 for those I was pretty happy.

[xMetal]

I might also note the feature I just discovered yesterday, the ability to print full-bleed, all the way to the edges. Damn was that helpful.

Overall it's a great printer for the money, quite pleased.