Canon Pixma iP4500

This is a good printer but I do not believe Canon makes it any more. I especially like the dual paper trays, small size, and speed at which it prints both documents and photos. I did not give it five stars… because some of the small pieces - paper cassette cover and paper holder end seem to be very cheaply made. It also works well with generic ink cartridges and I will not be held prisoner by printer companies who charge exorbitant prices for ink.

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THis is ok printer as long as you don't want to print photos. The ease of use is great, no problems with paper feed or being able to adjust settings. It prints fairly quick with decent quality unless you… want photos. Every photo printed on this printer has a purplish hue. I have tried many different variations of settings, adjusted setting on my CPU and on my photo editing software, contacted customer support and nothing has corrected the problem with the color. THe exact same pics when printed on another printer come out perfect so I have been able to rule out my CPU or photo editing software as the problem. I will definetely be buying a different printer for photo printing.

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Canon sent me an Email asking me to review my printer. But when I clicked on the button, it took me to the general Canon site where I was supposed to find my printer. Apparently the iP4500 is so old… already that it was not listed. So I decided to review it anyway here on Amazon. By way of full disclosure, I used laser printers for some 25 years and this Canon is my first inkjet printer. So it is not surprising that I find it very slow and very expensive to operate. I only bought it because my wife wanted to copy some color pictures of fashion. The printer did a great job of copying the pictures and my wife was delighted. As for my own use of the printer, my main complaint is that I cannot set the defaults. I would like the printer to be set on grayscale and preview. The default is OFF. Sometimes the printer does stay on my sets, and other times it reverts to the default. The retrieve function requires too many keystrokes and does not permanently set the functions. All this becomes even more complicated when I use the printer with other software such as the Microsoft Photo-Ed. I have tried to work around the problem by creating additional "printers" in Control Panel but they don't work any better than the original. My current operating system is Vista x64. Otherwise the printer is excellent. However, after using the printer for a while, I discovered that it is much too expensive to operate. I was naive enough to think that if I only used black ink, the cost would be tolerable. But the printer actually draws from the colored inks even when you use only black. During my third black cartridge one of the colored cartridges was used up which would mean another sixty bucks for a set. So I put the Pixma aside and will use it only when colored printing is required. I bought a Brother 1240 Laser Printer for very little money and that is what I use for everyday printing.

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