Canon PIXMA MX860 Wireless All-In-One office Printer

I am going to skip a long review and give you the bottom line: for my home and solo consulting practice, which is almost paperless, I have not found a better multifunction machine. Based on features alone this is an excellent machine; it's ease of use and functionality are incredible for such a low price. When considering the performance at the MX860's price and Canon is way ahead of the competition.I got my first Canon multifunction bundled with a laptop purchase (almost free after rebate) and because of the price and no experience with Canon I had low/no expectations. The MX860 is my second Canon multifunction machine. (I also have a Canon portable scanner that I take to client sites -- also excellent.) I use my MX 860 heavily for scanning, and moderately for copying and printing. It is excellent for scanning (I upgraded to get the feeder), especially when used in combination with Adobe Acrobat. Copying is equally good. The printing is a little slow; the machine not for volume printing. The extra paper source is great for letterhead and using the back side of paper for drafts. I don't use the fax feature, nor have I used the wireless.The ink cartridges are smallish and the machine does seem to use ink quickly, but this sense may just be due to the small cartridges.I have checked out other vendor's multifunction machines in detail (including HP -- which builds excellent machines of all kinds) and, take my word for it, none come close to the elegance of the hardware and software. I don't use other Canon equipment, so maybe this is consistent with their other hardware.By the way this review is written after using my first Canon for 2-3 years, the portable for a year, and the current one for ~six months. I know the Canon multifunction and the competition and, for the volume of work I described above, this machine is the best choice.I would not have bothered to come back to this site to write this review if I wasn't very impressed. I read many of the reviews below before buying this machine. Some of the complaints are appear to me to be the result of buying the wrong machine for an individual's need, or a failure to read the documentation carefully or at all.Oops, this ended up being a long review.Good luck!

I would give a 3 1/2 star rating, but it was not an option.The good: Setup on wired LAN was easy, no glitches - all 5 computers up and running in under an hour. Print quality is plenty good enough for everyday use, photos on photo paper are very good, though not the best I've seen from true photo printers. Very quiet operation compared to the HP's I'm used to. Good paper handling. It has all my must-have features including ADF, duplexing, and scan to pdf, as well as LAN capability and all the right onboard card readers. Fax, copy, scan features all work as expected and were easy to setup.The not so good: Installing the software on each computer took the bulk of the hour of initial setup, and it was inconvenient compared to a true network printer, but what can you expect for $120? As other reviewers have commented, having to attach a USB cable first, select network setup, then remove the USB, was a weird extra step in the setup process. Printing is slow compared to most printers available today in the same price range. Included software is limited - I'll get around to working around it one of these days, but it was the most convenient initial setup path. You will have to download printer drivers and software from Canon's website for Windows 7 as the installation CD does not come with these drivers. Scan quality is mediocre, not the worst I've seen, but far from being the best - below par in my opinion. Small paper tray, I will be reloading paper often. Small ink tanks, I suspect I'll be replacing these on a frequent schedule as well. Build quality is a mixed bag - nice finish, but all parts seem flimsy to me. I'm curious to see how long this machine will last.All in all, I'm happy with this printer for now, and for the price, I can't complain.

Wireless Network Setup is a bitch. It took me many hours to figure out the problem. The Canon MP Drivers and the Canon Network IJ Tool that ship on the CD are outdated. I run Win7 x64 Ultimate edition. It was actually my mistake that I ignored the compatibility warning. When I finished installing the drivers from the CD and when the Network IJ Tool setup started, Win7 displayed a warning saying "this program is not compatible". I ignored it because such programs usually worked for me. Apparently this one doesn't. So I kept getting "new port could not be created" error all the time. I read almost all the 432 comments on Amazon and searched all over the web for the solution. Finally I uninstalled everything, rebooted, then went to canon site and downloaded this "MX860 series MP Driver Ver. 1.02 for Network (Windows 7 x64/Vista64) mx860swin64ns102e2-2.exe". This exe contains just the MP drivers and Network IJ tool. This exe should be used if you want to setup the printer on the network. After running this, network setup was a breeze. After this I installed other programs from the CD (my printer, solution menu, mp navigator, easy photo print, onscreen manual)Printer/Copier: Great quality. I love duplex printing/copying.Scanner: Default scan, i.e., pressing the scan button on the printer, is fast, but produces slightly faded scans. Using the built-in "Windows Fax & Scan" program of Win7 OR the Canon's MP Navigator software (must check the "use scanner driver" option) increases the tone and produces very good scans. Connected over USB: The scanner has good speed. Connected over network: It's a dog, takes more than 1 minute to scan one page. I can never scan my 20+ page business contracts at this rate. Since business documents are black & white, I'm going to use the default scan. I can live with this. Duplex scanning and save to PDF are great features. I believe the scanner does crop the document a little as others have mentioned, but I'm ok with it as well.Fax: DOES NOT WORK OVER VONAGE (or probably any other VOIP). (cannot send fax, I get Result: NG, I was able to receive it) After spending many hours on the web, my conclusion is that it won't work over VONAGE. I'm not going to return it because of this, as I'm sure it will work well over a normal POTS land line.Memory cards/pictbridge: I haven't used it yet.Ink: Can't speak about it yet. Haven't printed that much yet. I'm sure as others have mentioned, canon played a sleight of hand here by reducing the size of the cartridges and selling it for the same price.Summary: I'm rating this a 4 because I like it. Also the price was reduced by $20 after I bought it and Amazon agreed to refund it. I'm happy about it as well. (Price was lowered because the next model MX870 is now at 149.99