Last week I took some photos of our daughter and of course there were some nice ones between the bad ones ;-). When I want many photos printed I use an online photo service like foto.com where a photo costs nearly nothing. It only takes some time before the photos are printed and send by mail.

We wanted one photo printed at that moment so I started my big and huge HP Business Inkjet 2600 and printed a photo. As I had experienced before, the colors were not accurate and we were disappointed by the results (again). The HP is great for printing A3 project plans and other drawings but not for photo printing because of lack of decent color management. Next I used my older HP Color Laserjet 2550 to print the photo. Colors matched much better but resolution was average. This added to the fact that I was still using a very old scanner with document feeder on a USB 1 connection (sooo Slooow) and my wish for a faster duplex scanner, the search for a new multifunctional started (and the other printers were placed on ‘Marktplaats’ the Dutch e-bay).

After some searching I found the Canon Pixma MX885 with (Photo)printing, Scanning, Copy and Fax features and best of all, it has a duplex automatic document feeder for the scanner. Otherwise I might have gone for a little cheaper model or maybe an Epson. Last night I installed the MX885 and printed a photo on special Canon photopaper and I was amazed by the quality. The quality was at least the same or maybe even better than the photos I ordered online.

This post might sound like an advertisment for Canon but that is not my goal. What I want to state here is that even if you have some hardware that was great some years ago like the HP Business Inkjet 2600 was in 2004/2005 and it still works like a charm and is for heavy use, it might be wise to just look around to see what is offered today in 2011 and decide if you want to invest some money in a new device.
I think it is true: ‘You don’t know what you are missing if you haven’t seen it before’.

Another one is to think again before you are buying for 200 euro’s on cartridges and printheads instead of buying a new device. This Canon costed me less !!