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I think the color values are better than other printers I have had (Lexmark, HP)or used. Cannon is an excellent brand, although this printer is slightly harder to navigate through projects, than my Lexmark. Overall I would have to say the quality of the prints are first class. It is more expensive to buy ink, but with high quality performance and I don't mind paying extra for ink. I also like the "quiet" feature, why would anyone want to hear the printing., I find it annoying, it's great.
I can not judge this printer on producing an image directly from a memory card or from less-capable image manipulation programs like iPhoto (which I do use for all my photo organization needs). This is my first all-in-one device. So good, we got rid of our (very good) Epson PictureMate printer because of the higher versatility of the Canon. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am an advanced amateur photographer. All my prints were created from Photoshop CS3 so all my images had been manipulated with respect to image size, contrast, and sharpness. I was not buying this as photo printer--that was going to be a future purchase. I tend to over research whatever I buy but the price, reviews, and specs for the MX850 were generally pretty good.
I bought the MX850 and got it set up on our network--my only complaint might be that setting up the printer on an ethernet is a little user unfriendly. I thought I would just try on a 4x6 print and was amazed at how good it was. I bought this printer as a general-purpose family printer/scanner. For the first time since going digital, my pictures weren't trapped in the computer. I have made close to 100 large prints and was surprised how parsimonious with ink this printer is. I color calibrate my Mac monitors. The MP Navigator software works reasonably well but the UI is a little idiosyncratic--it doesn't have the polish of a true Mac OS X application. In general the copying and scanning functions very well.
I have always been leery of multi-function devices thinking that they would be a "jack of all trades" but the "master of none." I may have also been biased because multifunction printer support when Mac OS X was released was pretty spotty. However, every printer I have ever owned tends to darken photographs and the MX850 is no exception. I then tried to push the envelope and bought some "pro" 8.5x11 photo paper. I was blown away by the results. When doing "fine art" printing from this device you may not get it right on the first print.This printer does great on plain paper as well. I have sent only one fax but that went without problem.
Printer will not power up after power outage; was plugged into surge protector and other components on same surge protector are working fine. Printer is only six months old. A shame, as I really liked the printer when it was working :(.
The sensor must be bad on the cannon products. It worked great for the first 2 days. It is the same problem with cannon mx830 that i bought last year. Not easy to get on the phone with anybody. Just frustrated at this point will try another company.
The printer won't allow you to SCAN when the printer is out of ink. Why. You shouldn't need ink to scan straight to the computer.Also, scanning documents written in pencil is nearly impossible. The image quality is poor.I've used this printer for over a year.
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