Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great Printer
Comment: Have had this printer for a few months and it is excellent and quick.
Love the prints I'm getting from it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: better than expected..
Comment: The factors for me were:
1. Printer is for home office, but more for photos. Good success with all good quality glossy & matte papers, regardless of manuf.
2. Features I can use into the future, even if not the 'latest & greatest'. I've experienced some Canon software to be semi-complicated, but this installed simply (with Win2000 Pro),& easy to understand. I always check myself re: printer properties. In my case much of my printing demands are one-at-a-time, with varying requirements. I don't mind checking the settings each time.
3. I didn't want or need wireless ability.
4. One of the few printer reviews (of any manuf.) that had consistently good reviews over a decent length of time. A solid track record matters to me.
5. Ink usage, so far, has been better than avge. compared to past experience with HP (although not a fair comparison). The ability to switch out only certain ink tanks was a plus for me. Time will tell if it truly is more efficient than 2 or 3 tanks.
6. My HP deskjet 930 series was & still is a solid printer. For the cost it printed decent photos but hardly with the quality of this IP5000.
7. I purchased a very well priced 2.0 USB cable from Amazon at the same time I bought the printer. Another helpful note that consumer reviews provide.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding.
Comment: The iP5000 printer is absolutely amazing, after coming from a deluxe HP 3-months ago. However, with the recent substantial increase in cost, including s/h, for the ink cartridges, the economy of this printer is now in serious doubt. Amazon has opted away from providing a shipping price advantage, so one's left to nearly doubling the published price of ink to get it there. Quite disappointing seeing Canon go the way of the other printer ink pirates out there. This is made worse by the need to increase color saturation on this printer to equal normal print appearance of HP and some other makes....so, those little tanks really don't go far. One should also be aware, per Canon support, the printer is not compatible with any add-on USB 2.0 card, without becoming unreliable. It seems they "...'are not supported by Canon because they require an IRQ interrupt request to be generated by the computer when used." There's really very little disadvantage though, using USB 1.1, since it only affects transfer of data, not the printing speed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great printer
Comment: After having used Epson Stylus 600 printer for 7 years decided to buy this one.
Installation was a breeze. Photo prints quality is equivalent to photo lab (from 4 megapixel camera). Text quality is excellent as well. Duplex printing is great, as is speed.
Recommend to anyone.
Customer Rating:
Summary: First Impressions of iP5000
Comment: I chose this printer because I could have it for well under $200 (I got it at Fry's for $150 after a $20 mail-in rebate.) I was looking for a great general purpose printer in this price range.
It got great marks for being among the most affordable to operate in this price range.
It is Fast and it still does very nice photos. I was impressed that the pictures printed with the ip5000 were equal to my 6 color Epson 1280, yet they printed MUCH faster on the iP5000 and it only uses 3 colors plus two shades of Black. (They market it as a 5 color printer )
I like the black casing of the printer. Setup was straight forward and easy to do. No driver installation was necessary on my Macintosh with the latest version of Tiger, since the Canon ip5000 driver already comes installed with Tiger OS X 10.4.x. I'll check on the web to make sure I have the latest version - although the driver I have seems to work fine. I was up and printing in about 15 minutes after opening the box. (didn't need to install the driver so that saved some time)
First big plus compared to my previous Epson printers - FAST! A lot faster than
what I am used to. Seems to be more than twice as fast. Granted my Epson printers are a few years old.
I did a text page test, and two Hi Res photo pages printing at two resolutions.
Second plus - Better Color Matching than my Epson printers. With the two photo test jobs I used default settings yet the color matching happens to be a closer match between my highend 21" CRT display and the printer output than what I was used to before on my Epsons. And the photos looked great, I have not tested its' maximum settings for photos yet. So better color matching means faster results without having to print multiple times to "get it right" which also equates lower cost of usage. It is only a 3 color printer plus two shades of black- amazing how it can produce the colors so well. I attribute this to improvements in the driver code, the ink colors Canon provides, and perhaps the way the ink colors are combined/applied. To the picky eye you could find even better photo printers but the differences are subtle, you have to look very carefully to see the differences, most people would not want to pay the extra money to get that minor difference in photo prints by purchasing an 8 color printer or some other more expensive options.
I haven't proven this but according to the reviews I read this is one of the
most economical to use printers out there in this price range. That makes sense because it only uses 3 color inks, and 2 shades of black and they can be replaced individually and canon prices are reasonable compared to HP for example. Which is
perfect because it will be of general use in the home. In the future, I may consider a
dedicated photo printer but for now if I want really professional photo printouts I'll send it out to a highquality online photo service. However, with the quality I'm getting on this, I would only consider that rarely or for larger format print jobs. From what I have seen in my first test, I'm very pleased with the results.
Conclusion: So far based on first experience - I would highly recommend it as an affordable general purpose printer that does very good photo prints. I have had two Epson printers, when they are not clogged they can do beautiful photos, but they clog too frequently and could be designed better to fix clogs more quickly and efficiently. For example, On the Epsons if one color is clogged, you have to run through the head cleaning, often many times, but it fires all the colors even if they have no problem, hence lots of wasted inks = greater cost and a lot of time. And over a few years Epson does little to improve their printer utilities. Clogging is most common if you don't use the color printing on a regular basis. Epsons can produce great prints, but over time I had to work too hard to get great results on the Epsons and having to work hard means more wasted ink and paper and time.
More time with the Canon iP5000 printer will give me a better indication of how it
compares to the Epson and which one clogs more frequently and which one makes it easier to unclog the print heads. You want something that just works well consistently.
For less than $200 I think this is an outstanding printer and recommend it.
One of my sources of info on the web:
[...]
I"m a long time high end consumer that has used Digital Cameras and Photo Printers ever since they first came out. I have sold many pictures which I have printed myself.
Summary: Great Printer
Comment: Have had this printer for a few months and it is excellent and quick.
Love the prints I'm getting from it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: better than expected..
Comment: The factors for me were:
1. Printer is for home office, but more for photos. Good success with all good quality glossy & matte papers, regardless of manuf.
2. Features I can use into the future, even if not the 'latest & greatest'. I've experienced some Canon software to be semi-complicated, but this installed simply (with Win2000 Pro),& easy to understand. I always check myself re: printer properties. In my case much of my printing demands are one-at-a-time, with varying requirements. I don't mind checking the settings each time.
3. I didn't want or need wireless ability.
4. One of the few printer reviews (of any manuf.) that had consistently good reviews over a decent length of time. A solid track record matters to me.
5. Ink usage, so far, has been better than avge. compared to past experience with HP (although not a fair comparison). The ability to switch out only certain ink tanks was a plus for me. Time will tell if it truly is more efficient than 2 or 3 tanks.
6. My HP deskjet 930 series was & still is a solid printer. For the cost it printed decent photos but hardly with the quality of this IP5000.
7. I purchased a very well priced 2.0 USB cable from Amazon at the same time I bought the printer. Another helpful note that consumer reviews provide.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding.
Comment: The iP5000 printer is absolutely amazing, after coming from a deluxe HP 3-months ago. However, with the recent substantial increase in cost, including s/h, for the ink cartridges, the economy of this printer is now in serious doubt. Amazon has opted away from providing a shipping price advantage, so one's left to nearly doubling the published price of ink to get it there. Quite disappointing seeing Canon go the way of the other printer ink pirates out there. This is made worse by the need to increase color saturation on this printer to equal normal print appearance of HP and some other makes....so, those little tanks really don't go far. One should also be aware, per Canon support, the printer is not compatible with any add-on USB 2.0 card, without becoming unreliable. It seems they "...'are not supported by Canon because they require an IRQ interrupt request to be generated by the computer when used." There's really very little disadvantage though, using USB 1.1, since it only affects transfer of data, not the printing speed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great printer
Comment: After having used Epson Stylus 600 printer for 7 years decided to buy this one.
Installation was a breeze. Photo prints quality is equivalent to photo lab (from 4 megapixel camera). Text quality is excellent as well. Duplex printing is great, as is speed.
Recommend to anyone.
Customer Rating:
Summary: First Impressions of iP5000
Comment: I chose this printer because I could have it for well under $200 (I got it at Fry's for $150 after a $20 mail-in rebate.) I was looking for a great general purpose printer in this price range.
It got great marks for being among the most affordable to operate in this price range.
It is Fast and it still does very nice photos. I was impressed that the pictures printed with the ip5000 were equal to my 6 color Epson 1280, yet they printed MUCH faster on the iP5000 and it only uses 3 colors plus two shades of Black. (They market it as a 5 color printer )
I like the black casing of the printer. Setup was straight forward and easy to do. No driver installation was necessary on my Macintosh with the latest version of Tiger, since the Canon ip5000 driver already comes installed with Tiger OS X 10.4.x. I'll check on the web to make sure I have the latest version - although the driver I have seems to work fine. I was up and printing in about 15 minutes after opening the box. (didn't need to install the driver so that saved some time)
First big plus compared to my previous Epson printers - FAST! A lot faster than
what I am used to. Seems to be more than twice as fast. Granted my Epson printers are a few years old.
I did a text page test, and two Hi Res photo pages printing at two resolutions.
Second plus - Better Color Matching than my Epson printers. With the two photo test jobs I used default settings yet the color matching happens to be a closer match between my highend 21" CRT display and the printer output than what I was used to before on my Epsons. And the photos looked great, I have not tested its' maximum settings for photos yet. So better color matching means faster results without having to print multiple times to "get it right" which also equates lower cost of usage. It is only a 3 color printer plus two shades of black- amazing how it can produce the colors so well. I attribute this to improvements in the driver code, the ink colors Canon provides, and perhaps the way the ink colors are combined/applied. To the picky eye you could find even better photo printers but the differences are subtle, you have to look very carefully to see the differences, most people would not want to pay the extra money to get that minor difference in photo prints by purchasing an 8 color printer or some other more expensive options.
I haven't proven this but according to the reviews I read this is one of the
most economical to use printers out there in this price range. That makes sense because it only uses 3 color inks, and 2 shades of black and they can be replaced individually and canon prices are reasonable compared to HP for example. Which is
perfect because it will be of general use in the home. In the future, I may consider a
dedicated photo printer but for now if I want really professional photo printouts I'll send it out to a highquality online photo service. However, with the quality I'm getting on this, I would only consider that rarely or for larger format print jobs. From what I have seen in my first test, I'm very pleased with the results.
Conclusion: So far based on first experience - I would highly recommend it as an affordable general purpose printer that does very good photo prints. I have had two Epson printers, when they are not clogged they can do beautiful photos, but they clog too frequently and could be designed better to fix clogs more quickly and efficiently. For example, On the Epsons if one color is clogged, you have to run through the head cleaning, often many times, but it fires all the colors even if they have no problem, hence lots of wasted inks = greater cost and a lot of time. And over a few years Epson does little to improve their printer utilities. Clogging is most common if you don't use the color printing on a regular basis. Epsons can produce great prints, but over time I had to work too hard to get great results on the Epsons and having to work hard means more wasted ink and paper and time.
More time with the Canon iP5000 printer will give me a better indication of how it
compares to the Epson and which one clogs more frequently and which one makes it easier to unclog the print heads. You want something that just works well consistently.
For less than $200 I think this is an outstanding printer and recommend it.
One of my sources of info on the web:
[...]
I"m a long time high end consumer that has used Digital Cameras and Photo Printers ever since they first came out. I have sold many pictures which I have printed myself.