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Canon I550 questions
Hello again.
My son was given a Canon I550 inkjet printer, a few black cartridges, and a set of black and color cartridges inside the printer. The printer had sat unused for considerable time. This is a simple machine with only two control buttons. It takes individual color cartridges. Unlike the Lexmark that I replaced it with, the Canon was supported on-line (as I recall, Lexmark had removed their frustrating driver and everything else from their web site: I detest companies that do this. It's "to hell with the customer" stinginess. I could find the Canon driver and manual easily. They downloaded quickly and straightforwardly. The driver installation was quick and easy. Everything that made me angry about Lexmark was a piece of cake with the Canon. To my amazement, the printer fired up immediately and printed flawlessly. It impressed me with its speed of operation: this machine does not feed paper so fast that it will tear itself apart. It was not designed to damage itself in order to be able to advertise its raw speed. It's thoughtful. This is the first time that I've gotten my hands on a Canon printer, and it really satisfied me. I would appreciate advice. I'd like to have tips about anything useful: ink cost, ink alternatives, what to watch out for, maintenance ideas, etc. TIA Richard |
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Canon I550 questions
Richard Steinfeld writes:
My son was given a Canon I550 inkjet printer, a few black cartridges, and a set of black and color cartridges inside the printer. The printer had sat unused for considerable time. /../ Hi, Nice that you are satisfied with your Canon printer, the case is not often the case---Canon has horrible support for other operating systems than Windows or MacOSX, and often does not update their drivers to work with newer versions of previously-supported OSes. I would appreciate advice. I'd like to have tips about anything useful: ink cost, ink alternatives, what to watch out for, maintenance ideas, etc. I have added support for the i550 in gutenprint, the linux inkjet printer support software. So anyone using linux or MacOSX can use the i550 without Canon's software, and have a much greater selection of paper sizes available. Personally, I use refilled ink as the ink is horrendously expensive, but if you buy low-quality ink you may indeed clog your printer and need to clean it again. So it depends how much printing you do, compared to the maintenance overhead you are interested in coping with. The nice thing about these older printers is that they are generally less finicky about feeding media types than newer printers, so you can put a lot of non-standard media through the printer. I would make sure the paper feed stays cleaned, keep the printer covered to prevent gunk getting in and messing up the paper feed rollers and friction feed mechanism, and preferably use the printer once or a week or so to avoid ink hardening in the printhead. As you seem to have found, this printer is quite hardy. -- Gernot Hassenpflug |
#3
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Canon I550 questions
I have added support for the i550 in gutenprint, the linux inkjet printer support software. So anyone using linux or MacOSX can use the i550 without Canon's software, and have a much greater selection of paper sizes available. Oh, you are getting me interested in Linux again. I have dreams about dumping Windows forever. Personally, I use refilled ink as the ink is horrendously expensive, but if you buy low-quality ink you may indeed clog your printer and need to clean it again. So it depends how much printing you do, compared to the maintenance overhead you are interested in coping with. The nice thing about these older printers is that they are generally less finicky about feeding media types than newer printers, so you can put a lot of non-standard media through the printer. I would make sure the paper feed stays cleaned, keep the printer covered to prevent gunk getting in and messing up the paper feed rollers and friction feed mechanism, and preferably use the printer once or a week or so to avoid ink hardening in the printhead. As you seem to have found, this printer is quite hardy. Thanks for these tips. What I still need to know is advice about who to buy ink from, or who to take the cartridges to for commercial refilling. I'm especially wary about doing this myself because I bought ink on line after reading praise here for a certain Canadian ink supplier. I didn't realize that the company had been purchased, shut down, and the new owner was actually doing business under the other company's name (and on their web site). The result was that I ruined all my HP color cartridges with incompatible ink. So, I need to know who is good. My son will probably want to buy third party cartridges or take his to be refilled. So, that's what I still need to know about. Richard PS: The Atlantic Inkjet company that was so well liked in recent years here on this board is no longer located in Maine. Actually, they never were, but drove their merchandise across the border to the post office from nearby New Brunswick, Canada. I've forgotten their Canadian name. They're in neither location any more. You'll find them on the web, but they really don't exist. |
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