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Easy set-up for both MacBook and XP

Customer Rating:
Set-up was relatively easy: load the install disk and run the programs. Both the MacBook and Lenovo Thinkpad running Windows XP recognized the printer wirelessly through a 2Wire (ATT) router. Functions: printing, copying, scanning (B/W and color; one-sided or duplex) all worked well. Scanner resolution at 600 dpi looks pretty good, although scanning take a few seconds to process each pass. Quiet and looks good. For an inkjet printer, I've very favorably impressed after a few weeks of moderate use. Canon seems to make consistently good products in my experience (primarily with their digicams).

The Canon MX870 is a piece of complete crapola

Customer Rating:
This printer should be taken off the market forever. It was difficult to set up AND more importantly it takes forever to warm up and get ready to print. It goes through some dumb start up process every time you print and it takes forever. If the printer has not been used for 10 minutes, it goes through its start up process. It took me almost 25 minutes to print one stupid piece of paper this morning. What I truly hate about this printer more than anything is that, I believe, Canon has programmed the thing to make it very annoying to use ink from anyone other than Canon. Literally every time I go to print, the printer beeps and gives me an error that it cannot recognize the ink cartridges. To fix this, I simply open the case and close the case. After doing this at least 3 times every time I print, it finally prints. WTF! They have honestly gone to extreme lengths to make it so annoying that you just buy their ink. Well, guess what? I am not going to spend 3x on ink to make this printer work. There is one more really bad thing about this printer. There are two black ink bays. A large one and a small one. If either of them run out, the printer will not print. The service guy at Canon tried to make me believe that one of the black inks are used for photos and the other for printing or that they are two different black ink types. Really? He is full of crap because I never print photos and the printer used both inks. I hate this printer. I hate this printer. My entire family hates this printer. I am going to sell this printer immediately because I hate it so much and it drives me mad on a daily basis. Please do yourself a favor and don't buy this Canon MX870 printer ever!

Made to reject 3rd party cartridges

Customer Rating:
This printer is obviously made to reject 3rd party cartridges. Canon has shrunk the size of the cartridge to about 1/2 of previous printers, charges more for the ink, and forces you to buy from them. Besides this, the printer is loud and slow. Yes, the photo print quality is nice, but not worth the expense and hassle. I upgraded to this printer from an older Canon printer and needless to say I am very disappointed.


I will be looking for a different printer.

Great little printer, funky setup

Customer Rating:
I like this printer. Print quality is excellent, and it's remarkably quiet. Once you have it all set up, it's fine, but getting there is harder than it needs to be.

First, like another reviewer pointed out, the manual is hopeless. You can't begin to imagine how unusable the manual is unless you've tried to read it. Truly amazingly hopeless. You can probably get by without the manual if all you want is a printer. If you need to figure out scanning or faxing, brace yourself for some frustrating reading.

There's a little LCD screen on the printer that you use for configuration. The user interface for this is very dated, and cumbersome. I've gotten spoiled by good user interfaces over the last 5 years, so it took me by surprise to see how annoying this printer's user interface actually is. There's also a Web administration interface, and that too is clumsy and only minimally useful.

A comparison printer is the HP Photosmart Premium C309a, slightly more expensive. The HP is beautiful and easy to use in every way that the Canon isn't. The HP has a beautiful user interface, both on the printer, and from the Web browser. The print quality from both is splendid. I think the Canon might be a bit quieter when it's printing. The styling of the Canon is more sleek, and the HP's styling is more functional. Build quality on both seems very good. The HP can print on CDs/DVDs, but the Canon can't. Also, the HP has a dedicated 4x6 photo paper tray so you can keep both photo paper and plain letter sized paper loaded at the same time. I own both of these printers, and I prefer the HP C309a because it's such a pleasure to use. But the Canon MX870 is a fine printer, and I like it too.

Worst. Manual. Ever

Customer Rating:
This printer comes with the worst manual I have ever encountered, in nearly 30 years of purchasing electronics. Most manuals try to provide multi-lingual support: all the English materials are in one section of the manual (usually the first section), then French, then Spanish and so forth.

Uniquely, this manual provides instructions in English and Spanish within the same page, with every alternative sentence written in either English or Spanish. Open the manual to any page and you will see a sentence in English, then a sentence in Spanish, then a sentence in English, then a sentence in Spanish...

It might sound like I am kidding, but unfortunately this is really how the manual is written: in two languages, alternating between sentences. It is hard to imagine how anyone could design a manual worse from a usability or readability perspective.

I have no idea if the printer works or not. I am still trying to read every other sentence, while taking care to avoid every other sentence... Having reached page 60, I am so taken aback by the design of this page that I decided to take a short break and write this review -- the first time I have ever reviewed anything, anywhere.

Imagine a page laid out as follows: on the left is the section heading, tilted at 90 degrees so you have to rotate the manual to read it. (And the heading, of course, is in two languages.) The body of the page contains three columns. The first one is alternating between English and Spanish (did you know that "Easy-WebPrint EX" is the same in English and Spanish? Well, now you do.) The second column starts off with an English sentence: "For Spanish Users in the USA" and is entirely in Spanish. The third column reverts to switching between two languages.

What happened here? Did someone briefly raise his hand (in Canon's Tokyo headquarters, presumably, where their executives must treat all foreign customers with equal contempt) and say "Hey, maybe we should separate out the Spanish stuff from the English stuff because I read somewhere that these are two different languages?" Did this guy get a chance to edit just one column on one page before they slapped him down?

So, how good is this printer? I have no clue -- I am still working my way through page 60... But how good could any product be, when it comes from a company that cares so little for its customers or understands so little about usability?