Summary: Not for Design Work
Comment: The good new is that this is a fantastic printer for photos. Super quality.
For layout and design, it just won't work. PDFs, for example WILL NOT print correctly on the page. Precise locations for elements will not print where specified.
Canon's response is this situation is the printer as designed exclusively for photos. Well, that's obviously not the case given that its output options include Legal, ledger, envelope, etc. Many people buy a wide-format machine for more that simply photos and it would be nice if Canon related this limitation as part of its product description.
Secondly, the printer will not print Custom Paper Sizes correctly in Mac OSX. Another MAJOR LIMITATION.
If Canon would address these issues, it would be just an amazing machine...to bad.
LC
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good engineering printer
Comment: This printer is a good choice for black and white 11x17 printing too. I wanted to print schematics and mechanical drawings on up to 11x17 paper as well as the usual office printing chores. It produces very crisp grey scale results on ordinary inkjet paper in "standard" quality. C size schematics are quite readable on letter size if you have good eyes and are comfortable printed on 11x17. A "standard" quality 11x17 OrCAD schematic printed in 75 seconds. The scaling of a TurboCAD v9.0 drawing was accurate to 0.3% which closer than previous laser printers. Have not had any paper handling problems. There was a minor software installation nuisance due to my use of dual monitors and the software's desire to pop up the registration window split between them. All parts were in the box and worked, though you need to buy a USB cable.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not as good a cheaper Canon printers
Comment: I purchased this printer as a wide-format replacement for my Canon i850. I assumed that because this was a high-end printer, its print quality would at least equal that of the i850. This is not the case. The i850 has a 2pL printer droplet size, whereas this printer has a 4pL droplet size. The difference is noticible to the naked eye from normal viewing distance. Text printed on the i9100 is heavier and more ragged than text printed on the i850. Photos printed on the i9100 have more abrupt tonal transitions than photos printed on the i850, despite the i9100's having 2 extra ink colors to work with. Closer inspection reveals a much more pronounced dither pattern on the i9100's prints.
Ink consumption seems much greater with this printer than with the i850. I've made only a handful of test prints and I'm already getting warnings from the status monitor that three of the ink tanks are almost empty.
This printer is a lot slower than the i850.
The only advantage I can see (aside from the obvious ability to make larger prints) is that the BCI-6BK black ink used by this printer is less susceptible to smearing than the BCI-3eBK black ink used by the i850.
If you are looking for a good photo printer and don't need wide format, I'd recommend the i960, which is a 2pL, 6-color printer. If you need wide format, wait for the new i9900 (a 2pL, 8-color wide-format printer announced in February).
Customer Rating:
Summary: Awesome/Fast/Savings
Comment: I have always been an HP fan for some reason... I probably thought they were best. Recently, I decided to purchase the Canon i9100 for long term cost savings (My cost of $15/color). Now that I have it... it prints beautiful camera images and it prints them FAST! I am very happy with it, no problems so far. I have been putting ILFORD paper through the printer with excellent results... plus it is wide carriage for enlargements up to 13"x19"...wow. I have no trouble recommending this printer...it wastes less consumables than other printers.
Customer Rating:
Summary: WOW
Comment: Being an avid 35mm film and now digital photo taker (primarily nature/wildlife) and having battled through trying to print off both digitally captured and scanned film images on an old Canon BJ, the time was right for a change. I researched the i9100 and Espon 2200 for some time as I wanted the best quality I could get without bankrupting myself and to have the capability of printing large format prints. The Canon won out based on comparative reviews on Amazon.com, relative speed and price as well as compatability with the rest of my camera/digital imaging system.
I've been using the printer for 3 weeks or so now and printed approximately 300 prints, mainly 5x7 but also numerous 8x11 and a couple of 13x19s. The sources for the images ranged from 2mp p&s digital to EOS10D digital SLR to slides scanned from between 2000dpi and 4000dpi. Without exception the i9100 has delivered with excellent results. The printer is fast (almost too fast to keep up with if you get distracted with some other task while printing off multiple pages of 8.5x11) and unbelievably quiet (normal paper loading sounds when the sheet is first fed in but that's about it).
Ink usage is pretty reasonable - I feel like I'm replacing a cartridge fairly regularly but I'm printing off large volumes and haven't noticed anything abnormal. My old printer used to fail to print one ink when first used for the day and required constant cleaning/nozzle checks to come up with usable results. The i9100 has had no such issues and doesn't seem to mind if you don't clean heads that often.
I would recommend that you use good quality paper with the printer but then again why spend this sort of money and feed cheapo paper into it?! Canon's papers work well, naturally, but Kodak Ultima works great with no profiling adjustments etc.
Overall, highly recommended to those who want to print high volumes of prints, large size prints and who care about top quality yet don't want to wait around all day just to get one print to work.