I've had one of these printers since 2002 (I think), and it's served me very well.

The output quality is very good, although the cartridge life is shorter than I would hope, especially the colour cartridge (holds Cyan, Magenta and Yellow), but this is typical for printers which have 1 combined colour cartridge instead of 3 separate ones.

I have even printed photos onto photo paper (and even plain A4) from this printer, and the results have been very good - which proves that you don't need an expensive photo-capable printer with the photo-optimised inks to get a good result. (I used compatible cartridges rather than Canon own-brand.)

I have mine setup with the drivers on my desktop and laptop, so I can plug it into either and get printing within a few minutes once Windows XP has recognised it.

The installation was easy, and I've only ever had to buy a new print head when the original one became too clogged up to be cleaned.

To clean the print head, I remove it and use an anti-static screen wipe, and that seems to do a very good job of cleaning the nozzles, but it does get ink on your fingers, so have the washing up liquid ready to clean that off.