Our family had wanted to replace our Canon i960 with for a MFP but where in no hurry to settle for something we didn't want. Brand loyalty played little part but we decided our next printer had to have: reasonable cost (under $200), duplex printing (to save paper), Ethernet connectivity, and be Windows and Macintosh friendly. "Nice to haves" would be pigment black inks, separate ink wells, and a sheet feeder. With the recent Canon rebate on the Pixma MP970, this printer met all of our criteria and many of the nice to haves.
Setting up the printer was very simple with the included Quick Set-up guide. Installing the software on our Windows and Macintosh (OSX) machines took longer than I thought (about 10 minutes per machine) but kudos to Canon for retaining feature parity between the platforms...so many times the Mac software is a pale shadow of the Windows version. I can also set the default printing to duplex and a standard quality on the kids machines (to save paper and ink) and leave it higher on the adults computers.
One welcomed surprise was the film/slide scanner hidden under the lid and the ScanGear software works well. (I haven't critically analyzed the scans for dust or scratch removal but if ScanGear can't cut it, I'll purchase VueScan for the enhanced scanning features). We have found scanning pictures across the network a useful feature.
The printouts are wonderful. Using heavy-weight glossy paper is easy with the straight-path feeder (this is also where I've feed envelopes, without problem) while regular bond goes in the standard tray. Colors are rich with no banding and the photos from my Pentax K10 have all of the quality of my older Leica generated prints.
The whole family has been very happy with the Canon MP970 and we look forward to many years of trouble-free printing!
UPDATE - What had been a nice printer is now a frustration. The printer will not print without intervention (jammed paper or printer not recognizing new Canon printer cartridges) and the duplexer will not work. So, we have a feature rich printer with function in about 1/4 the features.
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Buy the Canon Pixma MP970 Photo All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2181B002) here!!!
