Canon Pixma iP2600 Photo Inkjet Printer (2435B002)

I was needed a printer for quick jobs at home and purchased this machine because it seemed stylish. It has been a wonderful saver given space issues in my home. When the top and tray fold up (which is very quick to do, this sits like a nice black box on top of my desk. It is unobtrusive. I can easily stack stuff on top of it if I need the space. The printing is quite nice, though the ink is expensive. I would definitely not suggest getting the ink from anywhere other than an authorized dealer. I have tried to get the ink on-line a few times, but have ended up with cartridges that have so little ink that it is not worth the money. I have since decided to only get ink from Staples, where I can be sure that they are not putting some fractional amount in and sending it to me. I use to have an HP and would have no problem finding ink on-line, so this is a bit unique to the cannon 40/41 vendors. Print quality is what you would expect at $50. It does the job for office work, but obviously if you are a photographer and need the highest in quality pictures, than you should probably pay up for some of the fancier printers. However, if you just need an occasional print job that can be a reasonably grainy, this will do the trick (I sometimes print CD covers with it. Its fine).

If you run out of color ink, it is impossible to use only black ink because it keeps asking to insert the color ink cateridge and refuse to print even though you set it up to use only black cateridge.

Dull photos? Ha! More like best-kept secret. $30 is a STEAL for print quality at this level. In 10 minutes anyone half-serious about photography or digital color can have this little thing churning out some decidedly nice looking output on a wide variety of stock. Think color space. Then think luminance. Spend 10 minutes calibrating this thing and, erm, holy cow. Bright, screen-true prints with bandless gradients and a dynamic range thatll handle almost anything the 8-bit world can throw at it. 30 bucks? Two $20 (retail) cartridges? Are you kidding me? MY PICTURES ARE DULL AND WASHED-OUT! So adjust your printer. This basic calibration process should be performed on any new printer if youre serious about image quality. You need to make your printouts look as much as possible like the corresponding images on your monitor. Even if youre not obsessive about the subject, they should still come pretty close (assuming the device is for general use or generic proofing). A. In the driver settings dialog, on the Main tab, change Color/Intensity to manual, and click the Set button. This brings up a new dialog. B. Skip immediately to the Matching tab, and change the settings as appropriate. You need to learn about color spaces if youre serious about digital images, but most likely your actual display is set to a profile called sRGB, which corresponds to ICM->Standard on this driver settings screen. C. Go back to the color adjustment tab. Now youre going to start tweaking the machine to compensate directly for the poor-quality output. Youre going to make changes, and then print out a calibration image to see if youve hit your mark. You can download calibration images on the web, which are often collages that include color gradients, color charts, skin tones, nature scenes, lighting variations, grayscale images, etc. Or you can make a collage from your own images. Just make sure it covers the subjects and attributes youll be printing most. Usually if I can hit skin tones, everything else falls into place. REMEMBER: The goal is not to get appealing skin tones. The goal is to get skin tones that match what you see on your monitor. Also, remember that your monitor is a source of light, and a photo is not. A printout needs to be lit sufficiently to make a fair comparison with its digital counterpart. D. Start with the Intensity and the Contrast sliders. Move them SLIGHTLY to the right. I started at 4, printed a test, and then went in increments of 2 before finally arriving at an optimal value of 8 for both settings. You may get better results adjusting them more or less, in sync or not, whatever. Depends on how your monitors calibrated, among other things. E. Thats PROBABLY all youll have to do. But if theres a printout problem thats truly a question of a colors ***hue*** (which shouldnt occur if youve matched the profiles) and not its ***luminance***, you can adjust the ink volume CMY sliders at the top. I personally didnt have to do this. BUT THE INK RUNS OUT TOO FAST! 1. The 30/31 cartridges that came with your printer are fully compatible with the PG40 and the PG41. Just like the box says. And your Quick Start Guide. And your manual. So what? Well, the 40 and the 41 give somewhere between twice and three times the yield of the 30 and the 31. And they cost the same. Go figure. 2. If you want a high-volume printer, you bought the wrong machine. The 30 bucks shouldve been a hint. ;-) MY SHEETS FALL ALL OVER THE FLOOR! Umm, swing the little arm out.

I purchased this printer and it stopped working after three months. Great timing since my warranty expired after a month or so. I took it to a repair shop and found it could not even be fixed because the AC adapter unit inside was faulty. I ended up throwing away a $50 printer, time, and money. Amazon was no help due to the warranty expiration. Research more carefully and youll be happier.

The Canon Pixma IP2600 / 2600 is a P.O.S. It prints super light, as if the color in was watered down. You get what you pay for. Pay $25 more and get the 4600 and youll be satisfied, but research the ink costs in advance. Also look at generic ink distributors.

We are very pleased with our Canon photo printer. We printed photos off of the computer the first day we had it and they came out very clear and the colors were perfect. I will use this item for all my picture printing from my camera from now on. It will save me a lot of money since I have been printing pictures at WalMart for 28cents each. Glad we ordered the Canon machine and recommend it to others. Thank you.

My old printer died and I had a lot of ink cartridges for it. I am so glad I found a compatible printer for the cartridges and the printer works like a dream! And the price was reasonable!

This printer was bought due to the low price and I hoped for the best possible. Well, I am fully happy with what I got for the money without a doubt

As soon as I opened the box I removed the printer and set it up. I immediately discovered that the paper tray was detached and broken. I then tried to print and found that the flashing yellow light indicated a problem that could not be repaired. I had previously owned two identical printers, and wanted one just like it. The manufacturer has discontinued the model, which is why I purchased the used Canon printer. The previous two Canon printers that I had owned had the same problem. I took each of them to two technicians and both of them told me that they could not be repaired. Why did the seller send me a printer that did not work from the beginning? Of course I had prepaid for my order, using a credit card. When I reported to the seller that the machine was not working he quickly offered to refund my purchase price. We had been communicating through the Amazon e-mail process. I waited to receive the sellers check and nothing happened. When I inquired he then asked me to return the nonworking printer and THEN he would send a refund. I complied with his request. I wrapped the printer carefully and sent it by UPS immediately. When I tracked UPS I learned that it was delivered to the owner at his home. STILL there has been no response from the seller, and no refund! I have documented all our correspondence.

Ive been searching high and low for a good printer, settled on this one due to the good reviews and ordered it from newegg. Went through the non-trivial install process for OSX 10.5, and the print driver is absolutely useless. When printing from programs like Adobe Reader, Firefox or Preview, I have absolutely NO printing options. I have to print the entire document, in full color. The only program that seems to have access to the full driver is MS Office for some reason. Canon support was not helpful in this issue at all. They basically said Oh well. We dont support all features in OSX 10.5. Good thing it was a cheap printer and Im not out a whole lot of money. Seems like some people are using it with OSX 10.5 just fine, so if there are ways to get the driver to work, please advise!