Canon imageCLASS D480 Laser All-in-One Printer (2711B054AA)

Comment: My wife and I make a ton of photocopies for home and work related projects. I decided to find a unit that was a photocopier first, then a printer/scanner/fax. We purchased the d480 after a bit of shopping and research, and a $[...] mail in rebate, and are happy with the choice. I have printed/copied over 1000 pages now and I would purchase this unit again.

The set-up of the unit, however, is extremely frustrating. I am comfortable installing just about any kind of drivers and software, including operating systems and major upgrades, and this unit's installation was very complicated. On the PC, setting up the printing function was very easy, and the scanning function wasn't too much harder. Setting up the network printing/scanning was a bit more complicated, but not more so then any other network printer. The Mac on the other hand, is an absolute nightmare, and I still have not been able to get the scanning function to work on the Mac. Most Mac OS X users are used to Mac's auto detecting printers with little issue. Forget it with the d480. The instructions are very poor. This unit also seems to be designed better as a network unit then a USB unit.

Printing speed and quality is excellent, and the unit is a very capable copy machine. The top loading feeder works extremely well. Other multi-functions that I've used have had top loader issues. I have only tested the fax function twice as we no longer have a land-line (didn't need it). The ScanTools utility that it comes with for scanning is OK. I like HP Scan much better. The scan quality is excellent however.

Overall, once you get it setup, you will be happy with your purchase. I don't know if it could handle a large office of 50-plus terminals, but for a home or small office, it should be just fine.

Comment: I'm lovin' this printer. Got it for $[...] after [...] at Staples. Coming from a long line of unreliable inkjets, this really blows all of them out of the water. The fax and copy functions are an added bonus even though I will primarily be using the machine as a PC printer.

Like some other reviewers, I initially had severe problems with lag when using the network scan feature with drivers that came on the CD. However, after I installed the updated drivers and firmware from [...], network scanning worked great (better, in fact, than my standalone HP scanner at work). It's good to see that Canon listened to it's customers' complaints and resolved the network scanning problems with a software update. The Canon also came with OmniPage Pro SE, which is a very powerful scanning and OCR tool...a very nice touch.

I would recommend this product in a heartbeat, even at full price. I hear that this particular model has been discontinued, so be on the lookout for a good deal on a great product!

Comment:
I have years of computer/printer/network experience, so I'm not new to this.

Printer won't print from Windows 7 unless I stop and start the Print Spooler service.

Won't print at all from Mac, though I admit I'm not a Mac expert. Just get an error message that the printer is offline or can't be accessed. I followed tech support's suggestions to reset the printer, repair permissions, reboot, and reinstall the driver. No help.

Canon tech support is great, though they weren't able to solve either problem.

I've lost confidence in the printer. If I'm having this many problems right out of the box, what's does the future hold?

Back to the store. Looks like it had potential. Lots of features, love the duplexing, copy function worked fine. Too bad.

Comment: My experience with this printer is very mixed. It worked for a short time with my iMac G5 and then after upgrading to Leopard, it quit working. I reinstalled the drivers multiple times, with no gain. Canon helpdesk was understanding, polite and patient, but could not resolve the issue. Same issues with my Macbook pro as well. Neither Canon nor Apple could resolve the issue. They both pretty much went through the same steps - removing the drivers and reinstalling with restarts in between. Subsequently the scanner worked with both, but the printer just refuses to work. Funny thing is, it works fine with Windows installed on my Macbook Pro using bootcamp. No problems there at all. When I bought a new Dell laptop, it worked fine with that too (only, it's too irritating to work with Windows after using OS).

About other issues, I had no problems using it as a copier. Print quality is good. Never used for fax. Scanner quality is ok, but automatic feeder always gave lines. Couldn't get rid of them, no matter how many times I cleaned the area as suggested.

The supplied software is so so. Could be improved much. No options for selecting the compression level for PDF or JPEG. On Mac, the option to scan multiple pages is nonexistent (available with Windows). If you scan a multiple page document, it generates multiple documents.

Comment: I bought this printer on a post-Thanksgiving sale at Fry's for $100 after rebate. I have been extremely pleased with the printer, especially since I got a great deal on it. 2 years since I bought it, most places are still selling the same printer at over $200.

The built-in network capability worked great. Unlike some printer network adapters that only allow printing, you can access all of this printer's capabilities (that involve computers) via network. The print quality and printing noise is on par with typical laser printers I have used. The duplex capability is very nice to help reduce paper usage. I am very impressed with how easy it is to run the driver installation software, which pretty much take care of every installation/configuration tasks for you. Occasionally when I need to manually re-configure the TCP/IP print server port (due to IP address change), it was also easy to change under Windows without needing to re-run the driver installer.

Printer cartridge replacement is pretty cheap. Cannon-made replacement is about $70 online. But I had switched to buy after-market replacement at only about $20 each. Not sure if it is b/c it's aftermarket, the low-toner warning LED came up after a relatively short time. But I just ignored it and it still printed just fine for a very long time.

Scanning is the only department this unit falls a bit short. You must have a computer, install Cannon's software (ScanGear), and a software that utilize scanner (i.e. MS Office Document Scanning) to do the scan. When scanning, you need to physically go to the printer to set it to SCAN mode, set up the document, and then go to your computer to start the scanning. A bit inconvenient for people that need to do lots of scanning. As another review said, I would love to be able to scan directly without a computer and have the scanned document sent to an email.

Also, it has a weird bug when using the feeder for scanning (at least when using MS Office Document Scanning). It always misses the last page in the resulting PDF. To work-around this issue, I have to add an extra sheet at the end of my document before placing it on the feeder. Not a big deal, but a bit annoying.

Overall, this is a great networked duplex multifunctional laser printer. It is a great value even at $200 range. I would still recommend people buying it in a heart beat. Unless you really need color printing or need to do lots of scanning, I highly recommend Canon ImageClass D480.