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

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

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.