Canon i70 Color Bubble Jet Printer

I love this printer for photos, it prints so well that you can't tell they aren't from a photo developing store.

In addition to all of the other "Kudos" awarded to this printer by the other reviewers, I want to add the following. While the price of "Genuine Canon" ink cartridges may (does) border on outright robbery, you DON'T have to buy them. Compatible cartridges are dirt cheap at places like "inkquik.com". If you buy a refill kit from say, "abcink.com", you can refill your own for pennies each. I do, they are VERY easy to refill, work as good as new, and canon even gives you a "Reset Ink Level" option under the print driver "maintenance" section. YAY Canon -- DOWN for HP !!!!

As a road warrior, I bought the i70 to replace my old Canon BJC-85, and to use with my Powerbook G4. On the plus side, it is fast and prints reasoably good text, and very good photos if you use photo paper. The black ink tank could be bigger, but that is a minor issue. It is the smallest printer of its type that I have seen.

The real problem is that at a certain point, you will have to replace the waste ink tank, something that I did not have to do with previous Canon printers. This is not something you can do yourself; you must send or take the printer to an authorized service facility, and pay around $115 for the replacement. That is equal to half of what I paid for the printer approximately 2 years ago. And if you ignore the warning light, the printer will just quit on you in the middle of an important print job.

Cannon says that as a "loyal" customer, they will give you a discount on a new printer, instead of replacing the waste ink tank, however, they will not tell you what that discount is up front. Further, a tech at the service facility told me the newer models, such as the i80 and ip90 have the same flaw engineered into the product. Seems like Canon has decided their authorized service facilities are more important than their customers.

I wrote to Canon, and received the reply that my comments would be directed to the appropriate person. I hope so.

I had this printer for about a year and had no complaints whatsoever. Ink can get a bit pricey but there's always Cartridge World who will refill both tanks for $18. I am on the road a lot and the size is extremely convenient, put it in your bag, get it out in the hotel, and boom, you got yourself a small office. Highly recommended. Hint: It's quite sensitive so don't put it in a bag that you'll check @ the airport. I did that for the 1st time last week, and when I plugged it I had an "out of paper" error even tough the tray was full. Through some research I found out that through bag checkout they had bent a piece that senses for paper, so I just bent it back and the problem was gone!

I have had this little baby for over 1 year now and have no complaints what so ever about the print quality.
For a little printer, the quality is stunning.
I also bought the battery pack so printing on the go from a laptop is simple. The battery pack has provided more than enough life, lasting more than my laptop's battery.

The one complaint: very poor Mac OS X software. I mean very poor. Mac users aren't used to being asked to confirm dumb questions multiple times like PC users are.

For example, there are 2 menu options to access settings regarding the ink levels and neither of them are clear.
If you choose: Ink Level Information why should you have to click 'update?' Shouldn't the software update the information before displaying it? This is like one of those annoying PC Wizards that ask you the same question multiple times.
The other choice regarding ink is "Remaining ink level setting'
Unfortunately you have to reset the ink level settings manually...a major annoyance and inconvenience. This is done by clicking the obvious Ink Counter Rest Button in the Remaining ink level setting screen. But why is there a Remaining Ink Level Indicator Setting button? There is another menu option that displays the current ink level so what's this for? Whatever it does, it sends some message to the printer. Maybe an ink level setting reset? If so, then shouldn't the other button have done it already? Are you getting confused? see what I mean!?
Who knows. It is just stupid and confusing.
The ink level indicators are almost never right anyway, so be prepared to have to change ink cartriges in a trial and error fashion when your print quality doesn't seem right.

As a matter of fact, when there is something wrong with your print quality, don't expect the Print Utility to be much help at all.
For example, When you choose "Cleaning" there is a button that says -Cleaning: Starts print head cleaning.' What do you think will happen when you click this?
Nope. It gives you an option with check boxes: All Colors, Black, or Color. then an 'OK' button. So you have chosen the colors you want to clean and click 'ok' so what do you think will happen now?
Instead of the printer beginning to clean the heads, you are given an alert box that Asks "Clean the Print Head?" and you have to click 'OK' again.

Geeez..... talk about annoying! Just clean the damn heads already!!!! The softweare doesn't seem to know it was written for Mac OS X and not Windows.

It's a shame the software is soooo bad, because this is otherwise a really great printer.

If you get this printer, you will love the photos, but be prepared to spend a lot of $$ on ink and get a little frustrated when you need to use the utility.