Didn't know whether to post this in the hardware section or this, so will leave it here.

I'm after a printer. My old HP 870Cxi was awesome. Printed really fast but accurately. My sis broke it during a paper jam and 'rents replaced it with a HP 940c without my knowledge. Did fine for the first two years after which I cannot print a vertical line down the page - alignment is all over the place. Also feeds at an awkward angle despite a straight paper tray.

Anyway time to replace it with a decent photo printer. Was looking at reasonably quick and clean text and good quality photos.

Anyone have any experience with the Canon Pixma range? Or the above multifunctional?

I had some sort of Pixma, everything about it was designed to treat it's owner like sh1te, seemingly. IME, AVOID!

We've a Canon i9950 that's goodness knows how old at work, and it's still chucking out good prints.

Again?

Yup but this was years before the laptop! Broke the printer maybe 10 years ago.

Ernie, what happened with the printer?

Urgh, on the PS3 here as usual, I'll get back to you ASAP...

Had a Canon Pixma iP3000. Printer was ok, quality was okay, drivers were total ar*e

My advice? Choose carefully.

TIPA awarded best multi-function printer 2011 to................ Canon PIXMA MG8150

Funny thing is I got a the MP610

works great never had problem with drivers

Which is last years version of the 8250? And the only difference between the 8250 and the 6250 is the film scanner in the former, which is not something I need.

There you go then. It must be pretty good if it's the same line as this years award winner you'd have thought?

Right... The printer was cheap but also the second model version, and I knew I wouldn't be using it that often so the small initial faults didn't seem too bad, but here's the proper list:

It absolutely drank ink compared to other MFPs I've had before or since, and the ink was incredibly overpriced comparatively too.

This thing's 'boot time' was absolutely shocking. And printing delays were ridiculous.

The bundled software was utter crap, but that's nearly a given.

When it ran out of ink absolutely nothing else worked, it just sat there giving you an error message. No help in the sh1tty PDF, installing new carts did nothing... Googled it, couldn't find an answer.

That's my experience anyway, and tbh I've never met anyone with a Canon printer now that I think of it . I wouldn't risk another one... HP are pretty sturdy and reliable IME

Well I've had one good HP printer and one bad one.

I'll try and do a little more digging on last year's range to see if there were any common problems such as those that you describe. I didn't think much of Canon as a printer (HP and Epson bave always been traditionally the best but that was many years ago) but the pixma range seem to do well in the PC pro reviews.

So a lot of the reviews seem to love the print quality and scan quality but think it's a bit slow, uses a lot of ink for clearing the nozzles, and is on the expensive side to run. However, they all seem to copy each other. I think there are three different reviews and the rest seem to be from a mixture (in some cases copying word for word, which may have come from the Canon spiel).

I'm happy to submit but need to look at running costs.

I know what you mean about the reviews, but that was my experience too, and that was some years ago now