Posted by George (NoVa) on February 24, 1999 at 08:28:58:
I am a Cannon fan also (C-3000). I use it as a fax, a scanner and a printer. The scanner part is fair, but the other functions are outstanding. As a Fax machine it has internal memory, which is great. I had a fax yesterday that came in and ran out of ink on the second page! When I replaced the cartridge, it reprinted the second page and then printed 57 more pages. I don’t know how large that memory is, but so far it can handle anything I need!
It is a great color printer and can do photo quality work.
I am using a Sharp UX1400 Multifuction fax machine. I do use the copy function. With the new computer I have a scanner and good printer so I do not use those functions. Most of the plain paper fax machines use a roll to process the incomming or copies. The cost per page is correspondingly higher. If I had to do it over I would buy the Canon inkjet cartridge fax machine. Mainly because of the per copy cost of the printouts. The Canon is in the $300 range here.
You also may want to consider hitching a scanner up to your computer and using that as a fax. I use paperport strobe, with Winfax software. It’s more expensive than a regular fax, but it allows you to do more with your computer as well. Just a thought.
I have Canon’s all-in-one fax/copier/scanner/color printer. Works great; haven’t had a single down day in the past year since I bought it. The C5000 or C5500 will scan and copy in color as well as black and white. The C3000 or C3500 will only do black and white.
What I like most about the C5000 I have (C5500 is this years model, really no big changes) is that I can make a color photocopy without the computer being on, which is not true about the Hewlett Packard models. And I was really impressed when I tried printing color photo business cards.
If you happen to find a C5000 still in a store, it should be on clearance. A friend of mine who wanted a color printer found one about a month ago for $220 or so (I paid closer to $450 a little over a year ago for the same machine!). If not, the C5500 is just as good if not better.
By the way, ink cartridge refills on the Canons mentioned above run about $7-10 on black ink, $20-25 on color refills which have all 3 colors in one cartridge. Or if you do mostly black and white, you can get a larger black cartridge that lasts 6-7 times as long as the smaller $7 black ones for $30-35, depending on the store. (Office Depot and Staples on the lower end of the spectrum of those prices mentioned above.)