» Canon PIXMA MP500 All-In-One Photo Printer & Sanner

Canon PIXMA MP500 All-In-One Photo Printer & Sanner Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Drinks ink, and won't scan without it!!
Comment: I bought this all-in-one over a year ago, so I've had sometime to wear this thing in. For the amount of printing I do, mostly text and some pictures, it goes through ink pretty quickly given the number of pages actually printed. I print a lot at work on my desk top printer, but I replace the ink cartridge more with this printer then I do the printer I have at work.

The reason how quickly the printer runs through ink is important goes beyond the obvious; everything in this all-in-one is connected to how much ink you have. If you don't have ink, you can't even scan.

This printer also has two black ink wells, and you have to have both black ink wells with ink in them to print. If one of them reads as empty it will not pull from the other to finish the job.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Met all my expectations...
Comment: I purchased this printer second hand and I am absolutely delighted with it.

Quiet as a mouse, clear crisp output, quite quick and altogether in a word, "great." I print almost completely in Grayscale simply because it saves money but the cartridges are not too pricey and I've found the machine most reliable. I can't speak for its color quality so I wont.

I turned this sucker into a bluetooth wireless printer by purchasing a $20 Kensington USB Bluetooth dongle. I didn't get the Canon one ($50+) and it works fine regardless. (I had problems using a security code with Windows but not with Mac. In the end I decided I'd go without security).

I haven't used the built in card reader or printed photos.

The scanner and the printer both worked flawlessly on both a Mac (Lepoard OSX) and a PC (XP) through USB connection. The scanner wouldn't work through Bluetooth - only the printer would.

Main Pros:
- Works on Mac and PC
- quite quick once it's up and running
- quiet
- doesn't appear to be too much of an ink hog
- $20 USB bluetooth dongle (non-Canon) turned this puppy into a wireless printer!
- build feels relatively sturdy
- drivers available online
- reasonably quick scanning

Cons:
- First print is somewhat slow (coming out of 'hibernation appears to take time)
- footprint is larger than many scanning printers
- Couldn't get scanner working wirelessly (printing is fine)
- You need to buy your USB cable separately

I paid a ridiculously low $60 for this second hand and after a couple of months with it, I still give it a big thumbs up.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Best all-in-one I've had
Comment: I bought this printer a couple of years ago, and have had no problems with it at all. Scans come out very clear, picture printing quality is impressive, and the ink cartridges won't break the bank. I like that you can replace the ink tanks individually instead of having to replace all at once.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Annoying and a rip off
Comment: The printer and scanner work just fine.
However, the color ink tanks either dry up quickly or you have to use them up quickly. This would not be a problem except the color tanks must be in operation to print black and white!!!

So if you want to print black and white documents, you must spend $50 every 3 months for the color ink cartridges too. You also cannot simply fill the cartridges because the ink tanks have a special chip on them to make sure you use the "right" ink tanks...Cannon. Basically, you spend 2-4x as much on Cannon ink tanks as you did for the printer. And that's just annually. So don't buy it unless you're printing mostly color photographs...

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Stay away!!!
Comment: This could have been a decent product. But for the ink problems. First you need 5 cartridges. That's right 5. Next, it runs out very very fast. This is the biggest problem. 4 cartridges cost 15.00 each and the second black costs 18.00. That's 78.00 a total refill. I print almost exclusively plain paper black text. The main reason I bought this printer was the duplex printing so I would not waste so much paper. Well the photo cartridges run out just printing black even when you indicate not color ink. You can not turn it off. When printing color it does not print a good quality color. So you lose all the way around. They should put some software together so you could not use the color cartridges just the one black. Until that.... STAY AWAY!!!!

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