Saturday, January 3, 2009

A Good Simple (and Cheap!) Home Printer for the Craftyperson

Holy moly - I've just plugged in my new printer, and printed out a few things - and WOW. I'm impressed - this is a good printer.

Recently, x-mas gift from Amazon, I ordered a Canon PIXMA MP620 for a steal ($109 - on sale right now) ... I simply need a new printer, my inkjet is from the '90s and its still going strong (slow slow death of the good ol' printer)

This is what I know I like in a simple home printer:
  • cheap ink
  • good quality image prints
  • quick cheap B/W prints
  • cheap efficient ink

I know, I said cheap ink twice. Its important. The last thing we all need is a printer that costs $70 to replace the ink.

This Canon had all that and its wireless and its a copier/scanner as well, and it was inexpensive to boot. So I bought it, there were many many good reviews speaking about the ease of setup.

I plugged it in and printed out a few pictures. Stunning. Biggest perk: this printer prints to the edge of the page.

Then I played around with its functions to test it out and printed some "Template" pages it had. For instance, a piece of lined notepaper, or music paper, or a piece of graph paper (it even printed in that funny blue like real graph paper) - I don't know why I am so impressed by a dumb feature like this - but I am! Did I mention it prints to the edge of the page!

Okay, so I haven't gotten it hooked up wireless yet. Supposedly that is very easy. But honestly, it took me a while to clean up and prep for the new printer in its new area... and I got the impression from the manual that you had to hook it up wired first to get it all recognized to go wireless... or that's what I'm hoping :) This computer is pretty smart (vista), so I am sure once I figure out how to plug in an IP address to the printer I will be able to print wirelessly.

Okay - so there's my super positive review so far. I will certainly pipe up about it if the printer turns out to be a lemon.

I've never had a printer that printed to the edge before, there was always that 1/4" margin that the printer used to feed the paper.

4 comments:

Amanda said...

I didn't realize any printers could print to the edge of the page! I'm so impressed. I don't even need a new printer, but now I want one anyway!

The wireless aspect is great too, since I have a desktop mac and a pc laptop, and I'd love to be able to print from both without having to move anything around the house. How can I fit this into my budget... Hmm...

Leah said...

I am still loving it. Although I still can't seem to figure out the wireless... seems easier with Mac... sooner or later I will figure it out. But I will complain that for PC the wireless instructions are useless.

Anonymous said...

Hi Leah,
I went printer shopping today (everywhere in Portland from East to West to South) and guess what -- I ended up with the MP620. Now we can troubleshoot our printers together. Or maybe we can buy ink in bulk! I going to try the wireless tonight. I will probably call you with questions, raves, and rants.

Leah said...

with Byron's help I am now connected wirelessly! (it was really easy too - I seem to have just skipped a step in the initial setup, after going back to that step the wireless is working now)

Thanks Byron!!