I bought an old Lexmark X 3450 All-In-One InkJet Printer 150 euro,
knowing that is a Color Printerhaving only one Ink Cartridge that
i surely have to replace, by bying a new one, but after old experience
with All-In-One solutins i refilled and clean the old one, that seems
to work again.
I don’t know how many color pages will i use, maybe an black/white
solution will be better, but so far so good.
Long story short: run out and get this multi-function device.
We run a boutique consulting firm specializing in software development and management consulting. After using the All-in-one for a few weeks, my take on the Canon PIXMA MX860 is as follows:
A) Physical setup – Lots of orange tape, but even that took a total of 5 minutes
B) Ink Jet cartridge Head – there is a flip-top mechanism that is part of the cartridge head; make sure you flip this up before seating your cartridges. The cartridges have a very nice feature in that they a little LED lights up if you’ve seated it correctly
C) Wireless Setup – Very straightforward. One piece of advice before starting this; the first time you do it, keep the printer close to a computer (you’ll need to initially use USB for setup). We have a range of devices on our network (Windows XP and Vista). The disc that comes with the Printer, for me anyway, did the trick for all machines. I had only one minor issue with a Vista machine blue screening the first few hours the printer was installed. After a second shutdown and restart (outside of the one that you’re prompted to do as part of the setup), this issue went away (fingers crossed).
D) Print quality – I’m printing a range of documents including short-run glossy brochures; the quality is excellent (or excellent “enough” for our business/marketing needs – fwiw, we are always commended on our marketing materials)
E) More on print quality – heavy color; as you might expect heavy color runs tend to be of lower quality, but if you have needs that have average amounts of color; this machine will do the trick just fine
F) Scanning – while the scanning is not world class – for a small office, it does the trick. It handles 11-12 point font just fine; further, being able to launch it from my computer and save as pdf onto my machine nearly effortlessly is priceless
G) Margins issue – I read on another feedback post that people had issues with printing outside of a particular size margin. I did not have the same issue (printing a brochure with design purposely fading off the edge of the artboard/margin). The software allows you to override the default margin, so — unless — I’m missing something this is largely a non-issue.
I’ve not taken advantage of the ability to retrieve pictures from the memory card slot on the printer over the network (I’m pretty sure this is possible), but that, too, seems like its going to be very handy with a newborn on the way.
The main Con to me seems to be that this machine is not really built for ‘large scale’ copying (eg, 60 copies). For that, going down to Kinkos and spending $8.00 seems like the most efficient option in terms of time, money (ink cartridge running out), and sanity (avoiding paper jams).
One final note: we have not experienced the paper jams mentioned by others.
I highly recommend this printer.