Pixma MP640 MFC product reviews

When my HP Printer died the functionality it had was wired connection allowing network printing which was great. I was lucky that I had taken an extended warranty out on this which in the end after telling them I wanted something that was networkable as it was the only way I used my printer, they gave me my Canon MP640 printer. I never needed the wired cable again even though it still supports it as well as the USB option I can now connect my printer wirelessly to the router.

Apart from that I was now able to print onto CD's and DVD's directly and the paper tray folds up nicely to look like a little box with nothing to catch yourself on, I have found the quality to be very good and with it being individual colours this means when 1 colour runs out I can replace the individual colour and not the whole colour set.

The quality on the printing is good for text for what is needed and being able to do duplex on both sides is great, the only annoying thing for the duplexing is that once the pages are printed on one side, you need to take them and put them back in the tray to print on the other side, as it has no auto duplex system. This can be a little annoying at times but has become accustomed to and isn't too much unless you forget about it in a hurry.

All in all I would recommend this for anyone who wants wireless printing or multi PC printing. Great product and won't look at another printer until this one dies, which will more likely be replaced with a similar model.

MacGyver would be proud of Canon for this one... everything you could need, rolled into one stunning little box. OK, maybe not so little... 'everything' still takes up a bit of space, but you certainly have to wonder what kind of Advanced Origami for Engineers degree was required to shoe-horn all this lot into what can only be described as a very compact unit, considering.

You have your printer... pretty obvious... that also prints onto optical discs, and both sides of standard paper with it's inbuild duplexing unit, pulled from it's lower 150-sheet paper tray. Throw in a second 150-sheet specialist-paper feeder tray at the back that it entirely integrated and designed to fold away into something darn-near invisible. Add to that an A4 flatbed scanner, a multi-card media memory reader that handles the most common media storage cards (though a distinct lack of XD I have to note), a dinky 3in TFT colour screen on the flip-up control panel lid, and more ways to send it data than you could shake a stick at... USB from PictBridge-enabled devices or a PC, wireless 802.11b and 802.11g, cabled network, memory cards... it's almost too much to deal with at once.

Design points of interest include the tack-away specialty paper feed at the back, that does a neat little 'Transformers' trick and folds away into the chassis and even supplies it's own utterly discrete lid that looks like just another body panel unless you know it's there... recessed ports on the back so that it will sit nearly flush with a wall... and a front paper exit hatch that will automatically open itself at the start of a print run, in case you forgot to pop it open yourself. However, on the downside, the navigation and control panel were a little 'kludgy' to use, especially with touchscreen technology so prevasive and cheap to utilise these days. Heck, even my Palm phone has one, and it's 3 years old!

Another slight downside that really took the gloss off the high-end printing, pun intentional, was that during our test print runs, we noticed that the traction wheels left ant-tracks down the heavier-gauge glossy photo papers... nothing quite says "epic fail" like a beautiful photo printed borderless on high-gloss 170gsm photo paper... and 20 small tracks of tiny dents from top to bottom that show up when you change the angle of lighting. Talk about "so close and yet so far". Despite this, my only real major gripe is that the unit seems to do a lot for itself when it comes to powering up when it detects a print request... I would have liked to have seen some way to remotely put it into hybernation and have it close up the exit tray, and control panel lids.

On a more positive note... set up and installation were a breeze under WinXP SP2, the bundled software was quite handy though nothing utterly essential except for the basic drivers and perhaps the CD-LabelPrint application for dedicated optical disc printing. The scanning features were seamlessly integrated into all TWAIN-compatible applications, such as the Adobe suites, and utilised a very nice handler application that allowed a lot of control. Personally, being one who likes to have as much control over image input as possible, I set "Advanced Mode" as the default so I could tweak as necessary for each task at hand. One thing that really blew me away was that this baby, connected via a wireless network with a link distance of around 9m through 2 walls, still managed to scan an A4 page in full colour faster than an older Canon scanner connected directly via USB... scarily impressive.

The unit is smart enough to operate many functions without the intervention of a computer being connected. Acting as a stand-alone colour copier, it will scan and print with ease, even going as far as allowing you to scan a CD or DVD placed on the glass, and print the artwork to another disc with an extremely high degree of automatic clean-up - you'll only need your PC for burning data onto the disc. Utilising PictBrisge technology, or direct from a memory-card, you can print direct from your camera, though be prepared for sub-standard results if you neglect the basic clean-up tools only your preferred flavour of PC can provide. Though far from the best you could get, this feature will at least appeal to those who just want a quick copy of a nice photo to show Aunty Mary or Cousin Jim to get their decision as to whether it's worth getting glossy prints made later.

Being a network-attached device, you can print from any computer attached to your home or office network. This was a real boon for our testing process, as it meant we ony had to install the drivers to the machines we wanted to allow access, then print from each of the specialist applications without having to haul the printer around the building. By utilising the wireless option in a secure network, we were even able to leave the printer powered on for significant periods of time without worrying we were going to walk into the lab and find that some charming person had donated 100 pages of blonde jokes to us, in technicolour. (We've seen it happen in the past... funny only because it didn't happen to OUR printer.

Overall, this is one device any home user or small-business operator would be foolish to overlook. It may be a bit too much grunt for you, or it may simply be a little out of your price range... but when you consider what you are getting for under $400, you'd be unwise to walk past it without giving it some very serious consideration. Scan, Print, Copy, Wireless, PC-Free Operations, Easy and Simple to setup and use, quite economical to run with it's 5 tanks (CMYK + Big Black) costing a total of around $120 for a full set. Not the cheapest by far, but the only makes and models that run cheaper tend to cost a lot more to buy... so really it comes down to the very-long-term economics, if you are thus inclined. For a networked household or small office needing easy access to image input and hardcopy output, this is a real winner. I am looking forward to pushing this baby to it's limits over the next few months.