Review rated by 4 Ciao members on average: very helpful
This review received a counterstatement by a party concernedRead Comment
I have never actually *owned* one of these myself, but I was called in by a family member to have a look to see if I could sort out a problem with it.
They had had it for over 12 months and had never been able to get a "proper" colour print out of it, and always assumed, being novice PC owners, that it was a fault on their system, ie. drivers installed wrong.
They assumed the ink must have run out, and replaced all the cartridges (at not much cheaper than a self-contained print head like on HP printers) but were still unable to get anything out of it.
I did some research and found that although the "selling point" of the printer is you only have to buy replacement ink, not a self-contained print head - what they fail to mention is the *seperate* print head on many Canon printers is very prone to failure, and at a cost of around £30 a time to replace this item (I believe it was called a BC21e), having to buy that and the replacement inks far outweighed the running cost of an equivalent printer from another manufacturer.
Part of the problem seems to be the ink "transport" method to the print head itself - it works on a capilliary system where ink is drawn towards the print head - but if the printer hasn`t been used (apparently even for a couple of weeks in some of the complaints I read), the ink dries in the system and buggers the print head. Bear in mind that any of the ink cartridges drying out could cause this problem, making it a very weak link in what otherwide might have been a decent printer.
Considering I have never seen a proper print from one of these printers, my marking will be below average for every category - except for manufacturer support - I emailed them and asked about the possibility of a replacement print head, and explained the circumstances, but their reply was of little use - "buy a new one (and make us richer)"
I was not able to find any generic print heads that could be used in these printers, which could have reduced the running cost - it was genuine parts or nothing :-/
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