Hi everyone,
I hope some folks (and Canon) find this message helpful.
Background:
I recently was forced to purchase a new printer because my 9+ year old iP4100 died. Having had very good experience with Canon products (both the hardware and accompanying software), I ended up with another Canon product. I did look at other printers / multifunction but they had either problematic web reports or not the features I wanted. I do place a lot of my decision on Amazon feedback, only because of the shear numbers of comments.
Anyway I decided upon a MG7120 printer (in white) and like it very much but it is not my perfect printer. My issues with this printer are:
- This printer has a 6th cartridge (Gray), nearly useless for me. My ip4200 (5 cartridges) printed great for what I use it for. (see below). Translates to more recurring cost with no benefit to me.
- It is limited to paper entering via the front tray, this limits the paper to the stated 28 lb. In my old printer I was able to print on 54# paper easily and without straining the printer. This was because the printer accepted paper from both the front cassette and a rear sheet feed.
- In the Canon manual, no mention is made of using adhesive labels in the printer. I called Canon Tech support and they didn't have an answer. He even consulted with the level 2 support still no answer. The term they used was "non typical usage". I personally think label printing on an ink jet printer is typical usage. Anyway, I was able to print white generic labels in my printer with no issue (only tried 1 sheet so we'll see if this is typical).
My usage, and typical of everyone I talk to is:
- Print text pages in black (most in the draft setting to save ink).
- Print text pages with some graphics in mostly black with some color (such as a account statement) etc.
- Print color documents (google maps, Web pages etc).
- Print labels for my files and Christmas cards. (I have horrible handwriting) This is problematic on the MG7120 (but not on my old printer)
In the 9 or so years I had the ip4200 printer I printed maybe 10 photos. My local Costco is only a few miles down the road and I can get photos printed by them at $0.17 each!
BTW I am not an IT guy but am very technical and was lucky enough to find the installation fairly easy.
My experience with the first weeks of my new Canon.
Installation:
I connected it via a wired LAN. I chose this thinking printing would be faster from my desktop that is also wired.
- I have a Zyxel router
- I use Eset Security Suite.
- My desktop is a Windows 7 x64 computer
- My wife's laptop is Windows 8.1 x64
- After the unboxing and cartridge installation, I used the printer front panel to select "wired LAN". Very easy following the Canon instructions.
- Installed the driver (using the supplied CD) from the Windows 7 computer. I selected the default options.
Printer and Scanner driver were installed and functional - Next I installed the driver on the Win 8.1 machine, using the same CD. Similar results to the 1st installation except two printer drivers appeared on the computer. One was "Canon MG7100 series" the other was "Canon MG7100 series WS"
It seems the "WS" version is a high resolution driver which took much much longer to print the driver test page. Canon says its for high resolution photo printing. I deleted it.
At this point everything worked great. We could print from either computer, Scan from the computer or scan from the printer, a really great feature from my wife who keeps her laptop upstairs.
Manual
The manual seems to be complete, however the manual is HTML based with links for each of the functions. This is great if you are looking for something specific, however for those of us who persue through the manual looking for functions / capabilities we weren't aware of, a PDF version would be helpful.
I hope this helps other (and maybe Canon listens).
John
