Canon Pixma MP210 Photo All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2175B002)

When our old printer was sent to the printer bone-yard, my wife and I searched for a new printer and found this one on Amazon.com. It is dependable printer that suits our needs very well. We don't do a lot of high-volume printing and the one day that my wife did so, the printer quickly ran low on ink. If you do low-volume printing and want a dependable printer that also has copier/scanner features, this is a good printer and well-worth the money spent.

I purchased this item in June (4 months ago) and have printed approximately 500 pages of black and white traditional pages on it. Yesterday while attempting to print another one page document, I got a message saying there was an error and to retry or contact a service center. After retrying according to their instructions approximately 5 times I received the same error message. I contacted customer support and after five minutes they told me that
1. the printer only has a 90 day warranty which I have already exceeded
2. apparently the paper won't load and they can't fix this item because it would cost more to fix than the item is worth
3. that i would need to replace the printer.
Needless to say I was livid. I spoke with three different Canon reps and finally managed to get a customer support agent who is sending me a replacement printer at no charge. I'll be using that one until it too gives up the ghost and will NEVER be buying a Canon limited warranty item again.
Continually during my discussions with the agents they told me this printer was meant for limited use (which I believe my usage represents) and meant for students. I am not a student, but I was a student and can only imagine how this could affect a "last minute paper deadline". If you are a student and reading this, please, PLEASE be sure to purchase printers with longer warranties. If your printer does fail outside (but no more than a year) of the limited warranty time frame, calmly but firmly insist that you speak to managers, customer service reps, etc. until they send you a replacement printer. In my mind, marketing a low-price item with a limited warranty that has a tendency to fail shortly after the warranty expires is a sad business practice meant to prey upon those not willing to spend a tremendous amount on an item they will use infrequently. It's not something I expect of a solid company like Canon and it's a practice and policy I hope they change in the future.

I use this printer for scanning, b&w printing, and a couple times I accidentally printed something in color.

For the most part this printer is good, both the scanning and the printing. My problem with this printer is that its similar to other Canon products in that it either lies about the ink usage, or it chooses to use color to create the b&w rather than simply use the black ink cartridge. I don't print in color, yet my color cartridge runs out just as frequently as the black cartridge. That is unacceptable deception/theft.

I purchased this printer just under 2 1/2 months ago. It did well and gave
sharp copies. I went to use it today, and it will not power up. I use
surge protection on my computer and peripherals, and with no external power
supply, I am left with an oversized paperweight.

I am in love with my new Pixma MP210 after using it intensively for 3 weeks to prepare for college graduate course teaching. I agree with everything positive that has been said in previous reviews plus these points that did not show up in previous reviews:

OCR function- can scan text into a word document so I can cut, paste, and edit the text. Comes with a preview and correct text software function that lets you easily clean up the scrambled text.

One thing I miss: when scanning you cannot reduce the page to get wider margins. You can do that with the copy function and then scan your copies, but not directly in scan (e.g. 90% scan).

File name only allows 20 characters which is too short for me to name book chapters that I've scanned. But you can correct that once you save it as a word file on your desktop.

It sits nicely on my desk next to my keyboard and monitor. Nice to have printing, copying, and scanning so easily next to me. Paper feeder works, but paper supply sits a little crooked. Paper does not come flying out at you which is another plus over my old printer.

The buttons are not as bad as the other reviews said. The manual leaves a little to be desired: It was a little difficult to figure out how to do the OCR function--for example, it didn't tell me to "choose" my scanner so the software would be connected to the Canon PIXMA. It comes with two softwares--one for scanning and one for OCR. So maybe some people will think this is clunky to have to move between two softwares. But both work great! Faster than my 2 year old Epson stand alone scanner and the cover is more manageable than the Epson's (which just fell down on me all the time!)

Okay, so it doesn't feed, collate, and staple--but for that I go to my office.
Canon Pixma MP210 Photo All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2175B002)