Affordable Printing (Canon Pixma iP2000)

Member Name: jord121290

Product:	Canon Pixma iP2000
Date:	03/12/05 (1195 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Borderless Printing, Good Software, Low-cost cartidges

Disadvantages: Not perfect for pictures

I bought the Canon Pixma iP2000 several months ago for the price of around £80. I was looking for a replacement to my ageing HP Deskjet 3822, which had suddenly decided to stop printing black even though the cartridge was full.
After a couple of hours searching around on Amazon.co.uk, I came across the iP2000 which seemed to suit all my needs: a budget price, low cost ink cartridges and borderless A4 colour printing.

The iP2000 has two ways to feed paper, which was a first for me with printers. There is the popular front loader found on many budget inkjets and also a top-load which can be used to print on specialised media such as photographic paper and all the fancy medias such as t-shirt iron-ons and greeting card paper.
It is very easy to select which way you are going to load your paper, just press a button on the front to switch between each loading option. There are LED icons to show you which icon is currently selected.
Both loading trays can be folded away when not in use for ease of storage or to prevent dust getting into the feeders which can smudge ink when you come to use it again.

As i've already mentioned, the iP2000 features full A4 borderless printing for photographs and flyers.
I found this feature quite hard to use though, especially with any software other than the Easy Photo Print software which is bundled with the printer. Unfortunately, this software only supports JPEG images meaning you'll be left to manually configure your printing options (which can be difficult) for all other image formats and other documents.
Nevertheless, if you can work out how to use this feature, it adds a level of professionalism and a feel of high quality to your photo printing.

The print quality of the iP2000 of course depends on the settings you choose on your computer when you send your work to print, but at the optimun quality settings (i.e using the print advisor to get perfect results or selecting high quality) the printer can deliver some impressive results.
Although you won't get photo-lab quality, it is possible to get vibrant and fairly sharp images when using high-quality photo paper.
For those who prefer their printing black & white and quick, the draft quality setting delivers super-quick printing and can produce dozens of pages per minute when printing just standard text.
The iP2000 features Canon's adavnced FINE droplet technology which Canon say improves the sharpness and colour of images by placing more droplets in a space than printers not using FINE technology. Unfortunately, I'm no expert on printer technologies, so I can't really expand on the details of this function and I can't comment on the effectiveness of this in the iP2000 because I really wouldn't know what I was looking for.

The iP2000 utilizes the increasingly popular PictBridge functionality which allows you to print staight from a digital camera or other supported device without the need to put images on a computer first.
There is a USB port located on the front of the printer which allows you to easily plug in devices to use the PictBridge technology.
Although severely limiting the printing options compared to using a computer, PictBridge can be a great function when you need to print images quickly, like at a party when your guests are just about to leave and you'd like to give them some memoribillia!

Unlike similar printers, especially the more advanced in the Pixma range, the iP2000 features just two ink cartridges: black and colour.
The colour cartridge combines the normally seperated Cyan, Yellow and Magenta cartridges in one.
Cartridges are very cheap for modern Canon printers, unlike some of their rival manufacturers (cough..HP..cough).
It cost me just £15 to replace both cartridges last month and I got buy one get one free on both cartridges!
It is very easy to replace cartridges on the iP2000, and even though not really required, there is a great section on ink cartridge replacement in the user guide.

Installation of the printer is very simple, both hardware and software wise. You simply remove the protective packaging materials from around the printer, pull off a few safety tags and plug it in.
The printer is only features a USB connection which may be new to people currently using older printers still using Paralell cables. You'll need to buy a USB cable sperately for around £5, as one does not come supplied with the cable. USB is nothing to worry about though, nearly all computers less than five years old will come with numerous USB ports and it really doesn't work that much differently from the older Paralell port, except its faster and has better rates of data transfer success.
The software for the computer is easy to install and all comes on a CD-ROM included with the printer. Simply follow the on-screen instructions or the instructions featured in the user guide and you'll have no problems setting it up.
Once installed, print a test page to make sure everything is working ok and you're ready to roll!

Technical Specifications of the Pixma iP2000 (taken from Amazon.co.uk):

Printer Type - Colour personal inkjet
Max. Media Size: US Letter, A4
Dimensions, cm (WxDxH): 41.8 x 26 x 16.9
Weight: 4.4Kg
Print Speed: Up to 20ppm Black and White, up to 14ppm Colour
Max Colour Resolution: 4800dpi x 1200dpi
Media Type: Envelopes, transparencies, plain paper, iron-on transfers, photo paper, semi-gloss photo paper, photo stickers, glossy photo paper, matt photo paper, high resolution paper
Media Capacity: 300 Sheets
System Requirements: Apple MacOS 9.x, Apple MacOS X 10.2.1 or later, Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
Interfaces: 1x USB, 1x Direct Print USB
Features: PictBridge, Canon BJ Direct, Borderless Printing

In conclusion, the Canon iP2000 is a fabulous low price printer that has just a few minor issues and has features that you would expect from much higher priced printers.

Summary: A great low-cost, feature-packed colour inkjet.

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