Canon Pixma iP2600 Photo Inkjet Printer (2435B002)

For the price, it's worth it.

Pros:
- Decent quality.
- Price: I bought mine from Wal-mart for $29.95.

Cons:
- NO paper tray. Which means that once it is done printing each page, that page will fall to the floor.
- Ink. I spend $35 per set (1 color, 1 black cartridge). They don't last long. I had a 250 page report to print out (no color, all black and white text) I put in brand new cartridges before and did not get through the entire thing. So it took me 2 of each to do 250 pages. I know other brands like HP you can get more out of for less money.

Do the research before you buy. Look at the cost of the printer AND the cost of the ink. If the manufacturer does not tell you how many pages each cartridge will print; keep looking.

The Canon ip2600 is slow and the prints are quite mediocre, but it's cheap, so what? Well, next time I would spend a few more dollars and have a much better machine. Don't believe the Canon Pixma iP2600 Photo Inkjet Printer (2435B002)reviews saying this product is anything more than C- or D+.

Needed a decent printer after TWO Lexmark Wally World cheapies refused to work after a while. I just wanted to print out my tax returns and stuff. The Canon was easy to use and setup. Just hope the ink cartridges don't dry up. I keep them in a glassine (dope) sealed bag, with a wet piece of paper. Hope this works. OK printer so far....

The IP2600 is a good printer for the money. Black and color printing is fast and quiet. I previously had the more expensive i850. This printer seems to burn through ink about twice as fast.

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 that'll 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 you're serious about image quality. You need to make your printouts look as much as possible like the corresponding images on your monitor. Even if you're 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 you're 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 you're going to start tweaking the machine to compensate directly for the poor-quality output. You're going to make changes, and then print out a calibration image to see if you've 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 you'll 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 monitor's calibrated, among other things.

E. That's PROBABLY all you'll have to do. But if there's a printout problem that's truly a question of a color's ***hue*** (which shouldn't occur if you've matched the profiles) and not its ***luminance***, you can adjust the ink volume CMY sliders at the top. I personally didn't 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 should've been a hint. ;-)

"MY SHEETS FALL ALL OVER THE FLOOR!"

Umm, swing the little arm out.