Ink jet printers have come a long way from my early model HP deskjet 500. Still, the best printers for printing photographs are dye-sublimation. The difference between the the two technologies is that dye-sub does not print dots of inks. Dye-sub prints a continuous line of varying ink in multiple passes for cyan, magenta, yellow and black. This is also known as continuous tone. As such, dye-sub printers do not have a "dot-pitch" rating. But since the craze with ink-jets, dye-sub manufacturers advertise equivalent dot pitch ratings. But don't be fooled. A dye-sub with a 200 line per inch rating performs better than most 1440 dot per inch (dpi) ink jets. For dye-sub printing I have used the Alps MD1300. As it is getting long in the tooth and Alps is going to discontinue it in March of 2007, a better model today would be the Kodak professional 1400. Dye-subs are generally more expensive per print due to the dye ribbons and photo grade paper they require. However, the output is very difficult to distinguish from a real photograph.
Still as I said, ink jets have come a LONG way. I find the cannon MP830 which uses the same photo printing engine as the canon iP6600D does superbly well. It does so well that I have stopped using my Alps MD1300. A lot of factors go into selecting a suitable ink jet photo printer. The best advice is to go to the store and have them print some samples. Ink jet printers deposit drops of cyan magenta yellow and black ink next to each other. The determination of the amount of drops of each color that are deposited and in what proportions to make a "pixel" or dot is called dithering. In the old days you could look at a photo from and ink jet printer and plainly see the dithering. Today's ink jet printers make it difficult to see the dithering even with a magnifying glass but they can be seen. The type of ink the printer uses is also important. Some inks reproduce colors very accurately while others last a very long time. In any event, to get the maximum quality photograph output be sure to use the special glossy photo paper recommended by your printer manufacturer. Some glossy photo paper is interchangeable, some is not. The reason is due to the special coating on the paper and the ink your printer uses, basic chemistry makeup. For printing text of graphics be sure to use a high brightness very tight and fine density paper. Simply put no printer can make good photo prints on crappy paper. If you want good photos use good paper.
But I was looking for a multifunction device to clean up the ol desktop and found this jewel. I am absolutely amazed at the various individual reviews on the various multifunction inkjet printers. I spent a lot of time reading reviews and it seemed there is always one or a few that get an absolute lemon. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps quality control is difficult on a device that does so many things. Perhaps its mostly the people with problems that take the time to post. But it didn't seem like there was one clear winner out there. In fact, the highest rated magazine review machines seemed to have the most problem posts from individuals. And the best magazine reviews seem to be in the 8.0 region. It was very confusing. But my research lead me to believe that this unit had fewer individual problems than the comparable HP units. I will not buy an Epson again although I looked at them and the reviews reinforced my decision made a long time ago. Lexmark and Brother seem to suffer from the start - from the magazine reviews. And they don't seem to get better with individual reviews.
I have had Canon printers before and they always served me well. The HPs appear to have serious network problems and, as I'm used to with HP, folks are complaining about HP's drivers and bloatware. Surprising they have so many network problems on the models that support it however.
Enough about general multifunction device research, lets get back to the MP830. I really didn't need network capability so what it came down to was having the kid at the store do test copies for me on the various HP and Canon machines. What I was looking for was a single device that would serve as a fax, scanner and inkjet printer for general printing. Clean that desk up as my Visioneer, HP laserjet and inkjet, and USR modem was taking up a lot of room. What was important to me was speed and quality of scan and print.
Now the kid at the store was really pushing the HP and I can understand that. I've had HP printers that served me well too. We picked a color page from a magazine and used the same page for the comparisons. Now I don't print text below 8pt. At my age 8pt. is tiny. I fully expected this printer to have problems printing text having read these reviews and because it shares the same ink cartridges and basic mechanism as the Canon iP6600D Photo. In reality though, I have no problem reading the 8pt. text. And the photo output on the copy was better than the HPs. Admittedly I don't use a 10x jewelers loupe, I just print and look and read. So admittedly it's very subjective. But the print on the Canon was noticeably better to these old eyes.
After getting it home I took some photos of my Murano and 350Z with my Pentax *istDS and printed them from my PC on highest resolution on Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy. I also printed out a few sheets on premium Hammermill laser paper of publications and text test sheets. I also faxed and received a fax. I am very happy. It prints great, text is very readable. The photo prints on the Canon glossy surprised me. I can now get rid of my ALPS MD1300. The photo output is that good. For the ultimate in photo quality however, I'm looking at the Kodak 1400 but wondering if I even need it.
A note about paper, I don't use the cheap stuff. I tend to buy the high brightness dense 98/106 premium. So I don't know how it will do on crappy paper and could care less. If you want a quality print you better start with quality paper.
The scanning function does well. The MP830 is USB 2.0 capable so it’s fast. The drivers are TWAIN and WIA based and I was able to scan photos and magazine sheets in with Corel Paint Shop Pro X, Micrografx Picture Publisher 9, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and Microsoft Publisher 2003. It does better than my older SCSI Microtek and my current USB 1.1 Visioneer in terms of speed and quality.
The SW and driver install was flawless and I am running Antivirus, antispam and firewall software. You also get OmniPage 2.0 for OCR on the CD along with Pagemaker 7.15 and Canon’s Easy Photo Print 3.3.0 and MP Navigator 2.2 for basic functionality.
Finally about the fax implementation, you send a FAX on your PC by selecting the Canon MP830 FAX printer driver. It does not interface with FAX modem software like Symantec WINFAX. And I haven't looked into WINFAX to see if it can be configured to function through a printer driver vice COM port modem. Not a big deal really as I thought about it. The only two features that WINFAX really did above the FAX function, was the address book and the cover sheet designer. Well, now I have a custom Cover sheet that I insert into a document and I manage address book information through OE contacts. So there is one more app that I can rid my PC of...good bye to one more Symantec product Yea! However there is a downside for those that want to keep electronic copies of the faxes they receive. The manual for this machine does not say how this can be done. It only says that the machine has enough memory to store 250 fax pages if it is out of ink or paper. But there appears to be no functionality to save a received fax to your computer digitally. I suppose you could scan in the printed out faxes if you just had to have a digital copy.
This machine has no built in networking capability. I don't use it myself but I you can try the share printer functionality of XP or a print server. In the past on other printers and peoples networks I have had good success getting them running with this approach, but not always. Perhaps others can comment on how well this approach works with this model as I don't use it myself.
In conclusion, to all those looking for a good multifunction device to replace their printer, scanner, and fax modem, take a look at this Canon PIXMA MP830. Don't let the technobable and pico points per fortnight scare you away. Go to the store, do some test copies and judge for yourself.
Why test COPIES? It gives you a good idea of the capabilities of the scanner and the printer functions both in terms of time to get a copy and quality of that copy. I made them set the machines to defaults, no tweaking. So tweaking them may yield different results. But I figure if it gives a good product without diddling, then the manufacturer has done a decent job.
Tip: To figure out what multifunction machines share inks with what printers, go to staples online look up ink and toners for a specific machine, click on one of its inks then click on Machine Compatibility.
