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56 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great printer for home or students, September 4, 2003
I recently purchased the Canon i560s printer in September of 2003. The Canon uses 4 ink tanks. As the inks are used up you only need to replace the color that is empty. This is much nicer than many other manufactures' setup where the cyan, magenta, and yellow tanks are combined into one print cartridge. The Canon replacement cartridges are also about half to a third (list price) as expensive as other brands. This could lead to a significant savings over the years and was, in fact, the primary reason I chose this printer.While the specifications on Canon's web site for this printer list it as having no USB cable included, my particular model did come with a 5 foot USB 2.0 cable. Perhaps that is what distinguishes the "i560" from the "i560s". At any rate, the inclusion of the cable saved me a few dollars and the trouble of getting another cable. The setup of this printer was a no-brainer. Just had to remove the packing material, install the print head and ink tanks, then install the driver. There is a "quick start" sheet that guides you through all this. I'd expect the average user to be up and printing in about 15 minutes. The print quality is very good for text and excellent for photographs. Especially good photographs can be produced on the included sample pack (5 sheets) of 4" x 6" Photo Paper Plus Glossy. I would rate the quality of a photo print on par with the pictures you get back with regular film developing. The Photo Paper Plus even has about the same thickness and consistency as that from a film developer. If you take the output from this printer and drop it on the floor a few times, bend it, and wrinkle it slightly, it will be just like pictures coming back from bulk developers. It takes less than a minute (50 seconds in high quality mode) to print a 4x6 print. The colors are as good as I've seen on a 4-color printer and nearly as good as high-end 6-color inkjets. You have the option of borderless printing on any size stock, up to 8.5" x 11" For day to day printing, back off the printer setting from high quality to either standard or draft. The latter modes print much faster. The draft mode quality is certainly decent enough for printing out email and the like. You'll want to switch to at least "standard" mode for printing out your resume or term papers. I tested a 30 page draft mode gray scale (black only) document and printed it with the following results: Time to start printing first page, 20 seconds. Time to print all 30 pages: 10 minutes, about 20 seconds per page. NOTE: the source for this document included only scanned 8.5" x 11" B/W images on each page, total file size 253MB. There is a status indicator (in the printer queue status) that shows about how much ink is available for each color, so you'll know in advance when you'll need more. In the print driver you have the ability to set the printer to automatically shut off after several minutes of inactivity (user settable) and auto power on when you print again. There is a USB port on the front of the printer to directly print from supported digital cameras - Canon Bubble Jet Direct compatibles only. This would be handy if you want to print out a quick snapshot without bothering to boot your computer first. I've seen comments in other reviews that the paper trays seem flimsy. I believe they will hold up fine if not subjected to undo abuse. This printer was just released so it remains to be seen how it hold up long term. However, it basically is the same as the Canon i550, but faster. I would expect it to hold up as well as the i550. From what I've seen, the i560 is about 30% more expensive than the i550. For that relatively small amount, the i560 is a good investment considering its faster print speed. ************************ Update: After a few weeks of use, I have the following comments to add: Printing a test document that is about half text, half color screen shots, 102 letter size pages took 16 minutes 20 seconds in draft mode. Average speed: 9.6 seconds / page. Text looked fine, graphics are quite readable, but solid colors have a noticeable screen pattern to them. Same document in standard mode took 32 minutes. Average speed: 18.8 seconds / page. Text was very good and somewhat better than draft mode. Graphics were noticeably much sharper. Printing a 8 x 10 inch color photo on plain paper gave the following results: Draft mode 18 seconds, output looks a bit fuzzy (comparable to inkjet's best modes a couple of years ago) also some slight banding. Color is a bit weak, but plenty good for school projects for example. Standard mode took 35 seconds, and was again much better than draft mode. Standard mode skin tones are a bit pink. High Quality mode takes 1 minute 34 seconds per 8 x 10 print. Again, this Canon excels at printing photographs and even on plain paper the output is quite good. By printing on special glossy photo paper, it is as good as I've seen from a four-color printer. Plain paper tends to curl when using it to print photographs. Overall I'm still very pleased with this printer. Though (as with virtually all printers) the average print speed is much slower than claimed on the box, it's pretty fast for an inkjet. (I was able to get about 20 b/w pages per minute in "custom 5" mode, but the print quality suffers greatly.) For day-to-day printing, I leave the printer in draft mode for speed and ink savings. The above-mentioned 102-page document looked good enough in draft mode for use and as a bonus, draft mode is basically twice as fast as standard mode. I've currently printed a bit over 500 pages (about 20 were large 8x10 inch photographs). When printing photographs, the special photo paper is expensive, but well worth it. The three ink tanks for color are still about half full, the black is just about ready to be replaced. Also, I mentioned above that Canon includes a printer monitor that has a graphic display of the remaining ink for each color. Unfortunately, I believed this was how it worked. In reality, it shows all the inks full until one of the ink tanks is nearly spent, then displays that ink as low level. Upon more closely checking the documentation, it is mentioned that the display will only show when the ink is at a low level.
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