I have the HP office jet all in one 6210xi and I absolutely love it. It is the quietest printer I have ever had. I tend to stick with HP on printers they make good printers.

Hi, Raven. Thanks for that recommendation. I'll check that out (for some reason, gardenweb didn't forward your email to me so I'm just seeing it now). That's not a model I even looked into. I was thinking of the HP's but there seem to be so many customers who are frustrated by the software, that I was leaning toward the canon pixma mx700.

As I started looking into this, I realized that I want fax (can be very simple though), auto document feeder, decent scanner, copier, printer, and ability to print photos (but photos probably don't have to be top notch, since I think it's as inexpensive to have the ones I like developed). And I realize that I do want wire networking. I'll be remodeling my home office/guest room and it would be better to have the printer on a shelf about 8 feet from the computer. And I had thought a duplexer would be nice, but am realizing that the few times I might need that, doing it manually should be fine.

If my thinking about any of this is wrong - or I'm overlooking things to consider, I'd appreciate any input.

Thanks.
Lynn.

Love, love, love the Cannon. The dual paper feeder is great.

Jane

pcmag.com and pcworld.com (among others) have printer reviews. Search for all-in-one printer reviews. Those two sites have both editor and user opinions.

Thanks fruitjarfla. I had checked pcworld - which is where I heard about the canon pixma 700 (their top choice). I knew there was also a newer pixma mx850 model, but I hadn't seen it reviewed. Thanks for your suggestion bc. I just was it reviewed on pcmag. They love it and it doesn't sound as though it's even better than the 700. Unfortunately, it's even bigger (by maybe 1-2 inches in each dimension) - but when I saw them both in the store, it looks more massive.

There's also a mx7600 (which cnet loves but stated it's for more than personal use). Maybe it's overkill - although I think the size is similar to the 850.

Even the mx700 is big. But Canon does sound like the way to go.

Anyone have the MX850 or MX7600?

Thanks.
Lynn.

I should never type anything 2 minutes before I have to leave the house. The only reason I'm correcting my typos is because they actually contradict what I meant to say above.

PCMAG reviewed the mx850 and IT DOES sound like it's a noticeable improvement over the mx700 (even though that has also been highly regarded). The mx850 is even bigger - an inch wider, inch deeper, and taller. I bought it but I'm afraid to unpack it and hook it up. I was planning on installing it this morning, but I've managed to busy myself with all kinds of other tasks and didnt' get to it. Maybe tonight or tomorrow morning.

Thanks.
Lynn.

Our old Brother MFC died last fall and I spent a while researching to find a new one. We run our business out of the house and need many functions. After looking at quite a few, and going to Staples and talking to the guy there (who was trying to talk me into the Canon that I didn't want) I ended up with a new Brother MFC. It is our 3rd Brother machine. It has a legal sized glass for copying and an automatic feed. There is another model that has duplex printing, but for an extra $100 or so, it wasn't worth it to me. Although I then found that model for the same price I paid for this model - at Costco. It sounds like this is a bigger machine than what you want. But I am just mentioning my search to point out how I decided which one to buy for us. The thing I think you really need to look at is cost of toner/drums. Some of them have combined toner drums, which the guy at Staples was trying to convince me saved $$$. I know it wouldn't, for us anyways. If we have a scratch or something wrong with the drum, it is silly to have to throw away the toner too! And likewise, silly to throw away a perfectly good drum because we are out of toner. Some of the other machines had cheaper toner cartridges, but they didn't last as long. The one I have should last approx. 3,500 pages. My old printer's were supposed to be twice that. Some of the other MFCs were much less than 3,500 pages. So I feel this was the most cost effective machine for us in the long run. FYI. The only problem with it is that it doesn't do envelopes - it crumples them up. This is a problem that I knew about from research, but I ended up getting it anyways and just have to deal with that. Hopefully they will fix that problem.

A few years back I bought a one of the cheap ( $99. on sale ) Brother's MFC 240 C all in ones... Other than the paper tray being a bit flimsy and not holding a lot of paper it does everything I need... Envelopes come out perfect ( if I put them in the tray the right way.. lol )... Not sure how many pages the auto paper feed takes, only had to use it once for 3 pages... The only thing I ever faxed was the registration and I haven't tried to print photos but the things I have printed in color were exactly the same as on the screen... The ink cartridges are cheap ( think I paid like $23. for all 4 online with shipping ), I'm on my second set but ran through the ones that came with it very quickly ( the new ones seem to be lasting much longer )... I really like that fact that I can print color documents in black only if I choose...

Rita

Rita, I did the same thing. I seldom use it, but I primarily bought it for the fax part. Brother seems to have good support, and after Vista OS came out, they sent me an e-mail giving a link where I could download the drivers to use it with a Vista system. Most other manufacturers would expect you to go hunt for this information.

What sold me on the Cannon was the duplex feature. I keep my business forms on the top and plain paper in the lower cassette. Both hold a ton of paper, and I never have to feed anything in. I do use it for business so that feature was very important. I type many documents and letters and it prints beautifully. It also came with OmniPage software free which I use all the time. That software is very expensive and they give you the basic. I scan documents and it is so easy to use.

The printer is very solid and feels like a commercial printer. I thought the price was very good for what you get. I have two, the older one is 3-4 yrs old and works like the day I got it. I bought another one last year. They are large, but attractive looking.

I hope they still include the scanning software,

Jane

HP technical support can also provide you with an address that you can contact to buy back the unused ink cartridges.

Jane, which Canon are you raving about? I'm interested in the model as well as brands. We're searching for a new all-in-one too.

I thought I'd report back for people who are still looking. I ended up getting the Canon Pixma MX850 (after seeing the review at pcmag.com which suggested that there were substantial improvements over the earlier model (they were not directly comparing it to the mx700, but rather a recent MP??? model. Nevertheless, it sounded like this 850 was better than what came before (the details about how skip my mind, but I know in readin it, it seemed worthwhile).

I had someone set up the Canon on Friday. It is big (and as Jane said, it's attractive and seems commercial in quality). I LOVE IT. The software is not bulky like HP, and it was easy to connect the printer to my desktop, my daughter's, my husband's laptop and my laptop. I can scan documents and the wonderful lcd display will walk me through simple steps. It asks if I'm scanning from the platen or document feeder, if it should be saved to a pc or faxed or emailed (I believe those were the choices). Then you can choose which computer to receive the scan (that computer must be on to receive it - otherwise I think it could be sent as an email attachment to be loaded on the computer later), and whether it should be saved as a pdf file or jpg. There are other formats for saving it in as well but I haven't tried that yet. There's also a way to optically capture the text and turn it into a text document which I think can be edited (for those without the expensive Acrobat Writer which allows editing of PDF files but costs a few hundred dollars).

I know some of the above is very simple and naive, but I've included for folks like myself who have no idea what they were looking for. It easily prints in color or black. It has a duplexer. I'm not sure I'll care that much about printing two-sided documents, but I love the either of feeding 2-sided documents in the ADF (auto document feeder) and being able to copy or scan them without standing there and changing pages. That was a huge factor for me in getting this over the MX700 which doesn't have a duplexer. At first I hadn't considered the convenience of copying and scanning 2-sided documents by loading the sheets in the ADF, pressing a button and walking away. That's convenient.

This printer is also remarkably quiet. I was used to loud functioning from my HP PSC 950 and didn't realize printers could be so quiet. I could even carry on a business call without interference.

I'm thrilled with this machine (which Dell has for $239 - best price I found). Even my husband who saw no reason for obsessing about this choice is amazed at how much functionality and ease of use is packed into a $240 machine. When he saw what it did, he assumed I'd paid over $500.

Lynn.