Canon Office Products MX472 Wireless Office All-in-One Printer

I brought this on Thanks giving on impulse because it was cheaper than replacing the ink in my older Cannon, and it comes with low capacity ink too! I always like the Cannon technology because the ink never dry out. I can print once a week or once a month, and the color photo comes out good. No head cleaning and test printing. I need wifi printing now because I have to tug the printer to some corners and mayne the garage to make more space for the kids. Just a year or two ago I refuse to pay a few dollars more for the wifi feature because I wasn't going to use it. I was wrong. Also, I can put it somewhere where it can be left on all the time without the light disturbing anybody. Power on and off seems to disrupt printing in Ubuntu lately. In a way I was right. I never did need wifi printing. And when the time comes, it was like getting a new set of ink cartridge. Google cloud print is a must as my kids are all on Chromebook. Ipad may be for preschools and kindergarten ( I do have one as a super kindle.)The setup is OK. But it's a pain in the ass for doing anything on a two line screen. For anything with an IP address, they should put in a web server so you can talk to the printer via your browser - as in all the routers and my entry level residential IP phone. You can setup wifi quickly via WPS if your router supports it (now they should all do). But there is increased security risk. Some printers have web interface but still you have to setup wifi if you never connect it to anything via usb. To be fair, I don't think you need to use the setup on the printer if you have Windows. I don't.I was wrong again as the printer do have remote UI, meaning it has a web server and you can connect using any browser. Cannon gives you the full manual but only in Windows (exe) and Mac formats. Hard luck for Android/Linux/ChromeOS users. I never even bother to see if I can see anything on the CD. The web manual is generic and does not have enough depth to even mention remote UI. Anyway there's not much use other than knowing the status of the printer and the amount of color left. But you never get that in Linux before and you have to manage using the Apple web interface previously.Ubuntu 14 detects the wifi printer and install driver for it! That's a change. I bought this printer because Cannon Asia provide drivers for Linux. And I checked they have drivers for this before I click the buy button. I don't even need to download myself.Generic ink is one thing I check before I decide on printers. But I'm giving up. It takes a while for generic ink manufacturers to catch up with protection schemes, and it's increasing hard. In my last Cannon, I have to trick the printer with control-alt-delete like sequence to keep printing, and have to put up with low ink warning light all the time.Setting up Google Cloud print is actually easier than pairing a device with netflix. Because the printer actually print out the code for you to type in the computer. In one stroke, Google wipe out printer driver problems for the world who doesn't use windows. There are enough Androids and Chromebooks that printer manufacturers have to support it. Then, the absence of linux drivers isn't a problem anymore. You can always print via the cloud one way or the other. Now Ubuntu/Linux supports Google Cloud Print too so no more drivers.Scanning is totally different. Google announced, but still havenot come up with, cloud scan API. But Canon has an official scan driver called Scangearmp for linux. For some reasons it has been available only from Canon Asia. Download, unarchive, run install.sh, and the scanner works like a charm (in Ubuntu anyway). Stupid me I never know that they have a simple command called scangearmp that brings up a GUI and then you can scan away in whatever setting. If you select ADF then the document you put on the feeder will scan into a single pdf file. My dream machine. But who knows ADF means automatic document feeder? The only Ubuntu package I know that use scangear is Gimp, the picture editor. This is what I have been using for scanning since two Canon's ago.It's a hassle to put document on the feeder and then start the scan back in the computer. They should have a button on the printer like a photo copy button to do it locally without the computer involvement. They did have this feature and you need to insert a USB thumb drive into the printer. But there is one better. Again in the generic manual you wouldn't notice that they have a scan to Android feature. You install the Cannon scan app. It will detect the printer. You can set simple things such as OCR vs Print, photo vs document and then scan away. Then the multipage pdf will go to your phone memory! It's way better than a USB drive. From the phone you can share it in dozens of Android ways and of course download the pdf when you are charging the phone via the PC next time.Double sided scanning is a bit of hassle if you need that. You scan twice and have two documents for the front and back. The problem is that you have to reverse the page order of the back document, and then put the odd and even pages together into a complete document. For a few pages it's trivial with many pdf software. For long documents there are linux software to do all that, and most likely that they can be scripted into a single command, able to run from the GUI file manager.Fax still exist because it has legal status. If other than my lawyer and my bank ask me to fax them, I'll be nuts. My VoIP provider receive my fax and email to me free. My provider doesn't support fax over IP. But there are online fax services and they will charge you like $10 per month or $1 per page to grab the money and run before fax extinct. But all is not lost. Being able to scan a document make it a pleasure to fax even if you need 3rd party. Also, you can appreciate the images first before you send it to the other end. If you really need faxing all of a sudden, a trip to Kinko or one month of online fax service is about the price of an analog phone adaptor for VoIP. For the same reason, last time I faxed I brought a USB fax modem!The feeding is pretty good so far. The machine is pretty big compared to desktop photo printers. It's the size of entry level laser printers. It has to be this size so a document goes in and come out in the same page order. When you print a document, it comes out in the right page order. Also you have to open the trays all the time to print. Paper tray is horizontal and a letter paper sticks 1/3 out of the printer front. The out tray is smaller but there is a flimsy extension that rotates out to catch a full size letter paper sticking out of the printer front. This is absolutely not safe for kids. You need a safe space of one printer size plus the footprint of a letter paper in front of it.I have been dreaming for this machine for decades. I'm basically a paperless man but the whole world seems to be against it. All people make documents on the computer but they will only give you a paper copy. The photo copier is always on the hot security zone of a company. The scanner is worse and fax is worst. I'm such a dangerous man that one of my ex-boss decided not to buy the page feeder option when he signed off for the scanner. I could use a fax machine but it's slow and the quality is not guaranteed so that you have to keep the original anyway. Scanning one page at a time really isn't feasible to go all paperless and organize all documents on the computer. Of course I can get one of these document scanner long ago but the cost, speed or quality don't justify it. Now that it's the price of ink cartridges, it signals to me that maybe we are all going paperless soon, or that the fax is dying fast.2nd, 3rd generation digital camcorders using tapes have VHS to digital converter input. Then they don't have that anymore as all the VHS home movies in the world are converted or left in the garage. Then there's not even digital tapes. For a while Canon has a scanner that can scan films! Now you can't find that any more as people goes all digital for photos now.

I bought this to replace my MX410 all-in-one that suddenly stopped working (I'm pretty sure it got jammed when a clip off my pen flew across the room and landed down into the paper wheel. After several attempts to try to get it unjammed and eventually breaking the wheel off, I finally gave up and got a new printer). I also have a MIXMA 330 all-in-one in my spouse's office, but it is not wireless.I didn't use the enclosed CD (I never do, because it usually loads other software that I don't want), but downloaded the printer driver and software from canon dot USA dot com. You can Google search PIXMA MX472, go to the Canon website (do not use other websites!), and select printer driver and software.The only problem with set up was establishing a wireless connection. Since my office is on the far end of the house away from the router, I had to take the printer and plug it in closer to my router so it wound find it. Then I unplugged it, took it back to my office, ran the wireless connection steps and, voila!, the wireless connection was made. The instructions are basically pictures, so you will want to know that when it asks for your wireless password, if it contains numbers, you have to press the * (star) key to change "a" to "1," then you can enter the numbers. Otherwise set up was fairly straightforward. The fax setup was especially easy when compared to the earlier PIXMA printer models.I needed the printer ASAP and paid the extra $20 for 2-day shipping, and it arrived early in the day on day 2, just as promised. The color copies are excellent, the draft black ink copies are super fast and also very good. I highly recommend this printer.

I would love this printer except for one thing Canon has recently made it so that you can't use re-manufactured ink cartridges or even refilled Canon cartridges. Well, technically that's not true, you can but you have to bypass the warning that comes up and tells you that the ink cartridge is empty and that isn't so easy to figure out and from there on out you never really know how much ink you really have. So far I've priced the Canon cartridges at twice the price of the refilled but I've also noticed that the pictures I printed with the refilled cartridges weren't nearly as nice as the ones I had printed with the small sample cartridge that came with the printer when it was delivered. All in all I think I'll just deal with it and pay double and buy the Canon XL size cartridges because having the nicer print is worth it to me. All that aside this printer has so many nice features. I know others have complained that the wireless setup was really difficult, I didn't have that much trouble. If I couldn't figure something out during setup I simply googled it and went from there. Should we have to do it that way? No. The directions should be clear and concise but they aren't and that's not a deal breaker for me. Maybe it is for you and if so then you need to know ahead of time that they really aren't, in fact there pretty much aren't any. But if you know how to use a computer you probably know how to use google. It helps to go back and read the previous reviews and see what worked for other users. They really do tell you what they found helpful for them in set up. I do wish it had a back lit display, that is a drawback for me. Having to stand over it with a flashlight isn't convenient but I can live with it for the price. :) I haven't worked with it enough to figure out the fax yet but I'm sure it won't be any more difficult than the rest. I do already have it set up and that was a breeze. The scanner is beautiful! Mine came with Creative Park Premium software. I don't know if they all come with this but it makes printing pics a dream! It also makes crafting so much fun. My daughter and I are having a ball creating 3D animals and Halloween jack-o-lanterns that actually turn and pop up and down. It also makes scrap booking projects easy. So in conclusion, for the money and despite the fact that they are in fact forcing you to buy their ink (which I suppose is where they are really making their money since the printers are coming down so much in price now?) my opinion at least for the short amount of time that I have owned this (only a month) is that I would buy it again. I will come back and update later as to whether it has held up and is still performing as well. Hope this helps someone out.