Canon PIXMA MP990 Wireless Inkjet Photo All-In-One Printer (3749B002)

• Six individual ink system featuring gray ink for professional-looking black & white photos
• Superior optical scanning resolution of 4800 dpi with included Film Adapter Unit to scan film and slides
• Maximum 9600 x 2400 color dpi for exceptional photo quality
• Professional color adjustment feature with the included Easy-PhotoPrint Pro software
• Use the new Auto Photo Fix II to automatically adjust and correct your photos

Fair disclosure: I''ve had this printer up and running for less than 48 hours. But the early results have been so incredibly good, I felt a review was in order. If you, like me, have been on an endless search for an AIO that actually worked as advertised and could hold its own with minimal compromise vs. more task specific printers, then I believe your search has ended with the 990.

Setup: A+. I have two Macs, one a PowerMac G5 running 10.5, the other a Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard, both on my Airport Extreme (simultaneous dual band) network, and setup was about as close to plug and play as you could get. Just BE SURE that if you''re running 10.6, you download all the latest drivers from Canon''s website. The software CD packed with the printer is not updated for Snow Leopard.

Wireless Performance: As noted above, connecting to my home network was a snap. I''ve had no dropped connections over two days. Now, I''ve never had a problem printing wirelessly in the past, but scanning wirelessly and reliably? Forget it. At least, until the 990, which worked flawlessly on both machines from the first scan. You''d swear that Apple, and not Canon, had designed this hardware/software solution. Pop in a document, click scan, choose which computer you want to send it to and you''re done.

Printing Quality: A. Superb quality on both black text and color graphics, and all reasonably quick.

Photo Quality: Haven''t gotten into this yet, but professional reviews posted thus far indicate that the photo printing performance is excellent.

Scanning/Copying Quality: A. Scans and copies are incredibly good. Haven''t tried negs or slides as yet.

Ease of Use: A. If Apple designed its own printer, this is how it would work. An amazingly intuitive interface.

I''ll post an update after I''ve put it through its paces a while longer, but it''s a definite 5 stars out of the box. Thanks for taking the time to read this review--I hope you found the info useful in helping you make a buying decision!

Update as of 10/16/09:

The Bad News: Within 2 weeks of posting my review, this printer has dropped in price by $100! Oh well... that''ll teach me to be first in line to buy a new model! :-)

The Good News: I rated it 5 stars at $299 and I still think it''s every bit as good as noted in my review. At $199, it''s now a steal of a deal as well.

UPDATE AS OF 12/7/09

The professional reviews are now coming in for the MP990, and they''re raving: Computer Shopper gave it a 9 out of 10, and gave it Editor''s Choice, stating that they had a hard time coming up with any "cons" for their conclusion. I remain totally satisfied after two months of use.

UPDATE AS OF 4/3/10

So, 6 months after purchase, do I still think this is a 5 star printer? Well, yes and no. The printer performance remains every bit as good as previously described. But the ink usage has been another matter. While I''ve owned a variety of other inkjets, this is my first Canon, and I feel it penalizes you more than other brands for light usage. After printing perhaps 2-3 dozen pages with color on them--and I''m talking very moderate amounts of color and no printing of photos--I''ve just had to replace all five color cartridges at a cost of $50 at Amazon discount prices. Do the math and you realize that this is a huge cost-per-page, driven by this printer''s all-too-frequent automatic cleaning cycles of the print cartridges, which use up large amounts of ink whether you''re actually priniting or not. Of course, all inkjets do this, but I feel this Canon takes it to a whole other level that just seems like a blatant cleaning of your wallet. That said, if you print color regularly, the ink usage may well be on par with the norm.

Buy Canon PIXMA MP990 Wireless Inkjet Photo All-In-One Printer (3749B002) Now

I am running an old G4 as well as an aluminum Powerbook, both on Mac OS 10.4.11. I have owned the MP990 for about a month and I thought it was time to start my review. I will follow up as I explore the different features. I spent more than 14 months researching printers, scanners and all-in-ones before I bought this unit. I will try to explain my rationale so that this review can be of help to someone who likes to know everything about a product that they can before they buy like me. I had a bad experience with my last Epson RX600 which just up and died on me one day. The Epson always seemed to get clogged again and again unless I used it very regularly. I have a laser printer that I print most of my text docs to so the Epson was too finicky for me. I was dissuaded from Canon printers and AIOs after reading many of the previous complaints about older models, the bad chip issue with the first generation ink cartridges, the dreaded U150 error that so many of their models displayed. The fact that Canon printers require you to replace an empty ink cartridge before you can use the scanner is in my opinion a major strategic flaw in their marketing plan.

I have printed about 60 4x6 prints and 4 8x10 photo prints so far with this printer as well as a few text pages using the starter cartridges. My grey ink cartridge has just displayed the "!" warning that it is getting low. The other cartridges are soon to follow except the Pigment black cart which is quite a bit larger and is used more for text printing I believe. This confirms others'' statements that you should stock up on grey ink carts as they are the most difficult to find and you go through them fastest. Amazon usually has them in stock. When my grey cart goes empty I will confirm whether or not the scanner and copy functions are operable or not and report back.

Installation and setup of the drivers on my Macs was uneventful and printer setup was simple, you just have to think about it a minute and proceed slowly following the directions; I downloaded the latest drivers and application installer from the Canon website and got the unit operating on Ethernet in short order; I connected it to the Ethernet hub I have connected to my Airport Extreme and so far have confirmed connectivity from my wireless laptop via this method, I have yet to run it through it''s paces though and conduct relative speed tests between Airport and built-in wireless. I did not setup the built in wireless in the printer so I can''t vouch for it''s function yet. I did confirm that so far I have not been able to make the scanner function work via Ethernet connection using the Photoshop ''Import'' plugin nor from the Canon "Solutions Menu" software utility, but after I connected a USB cable then I was able to use the USB plugin and got some nice reflective scans. Still exploring the available Canon color profiles to find an optimal profile for converting RGB scans to CMYK. The Canon 8800f scanner was my alternate choice if I was to go with a separate scanner and printer option. I felt good knowing that the same scanner element is used in this highly rated scanner as they use in the MP990. I would tend to trust Canon''s optics over Epson''s in any case. I am very glad though that I did not go with the separate component option and get the HP Photosmart 7560 along with the Canon 8800f. I saved myself some serious deskspace as well as money and I am not disappointed with the quality overall of this device at this point.

Plain and simple, this printer provides stunning photographic images, especially if you use Canon Photo Pro II paper, the best of them as per my research. The Canon has a 1 picoliter droplet size, smaller than the comparable Epson Artisan 1.2Pl droplet. I can''t imagine getting better photos from another printer at this price; they are lab quality and as good or better than what you would get at any of the drop-off places. Copying works nicely via the nifty front panel display which is colorful and easy to read but the printer can take a bit long to prepare to copy or print before it actually does it. Definitely not ''instant on''.

My only issues so far with this Canon technology is the Easy-PhotoprintEX software that is installed. The good part is that the interface allows you to choose and select multiple images from multiple folders on your hard drive and batch them into one big "saveable" print batch job. The bad part is that depending upon the processing options you select (smoothing, noise reduction, ''Vivid Color'' enhancement, layout et al) the software has to process and create a single print file for all of your selections in the batch before it will even start printing any photos. This may take a while because the software is PITIFULLY slow. Canon''s software developers may be better at building software drivers and interfaces for Windows but the Mac suite is well-intentioned but frustrating to deal with. Better to make your batches smaller. Easy-PhotoprintEX does appear to automatically select the appropriate color profile for the selected paper and results from Adobe RGB 1998 files are very good. I will be playing more with printing directly from Photoshop as both RGB and converted CMYK.

To sum, so far I really like this printer/scanner even with the software issues and occasional inexplicable machine delay. If anything goes awry and/or I discover anything really cool about this MP990 I will let y''all know.

12/22/09: Confirmed that I can print from my laptop wirelessly to the MP 990 using the ethernet driver via Airport Extreme connection rather than by the printer''s built-in wireless. Print speed is quite acceptable.

12/31/09: 1st Grey cartridge ran out after approx. 75-4x6 and 12-8x10 prints were done. The printer allowed me to finish printing the current job by pressing the OK button. When I pulled out the cartridge it was indeed completely empty. I am pleased that the chip on the cartridge is correctly reporting ink remaining status since I was concerned about that after all the previous bad reports in that regard. My magenta cartridge will be the next to need replacement.

3/5/10: After printing a few large technical manuals that used a lot of ink and then not using the printer for a few days the print head station for the Pigment Black tank got hopelessly clogged up. I ran the deep cleaning cycle 6 times or so and that used up more than 1 full cartridge tank and it still would not open up. I called Canon technical support, got connected to an english speaking person in Chesapeake,VA within 5 mins or so and within 10 mins of being on the phone with the guy and cleaning the pool of ink out of the print head, he stated that the print head should not be this clogged up after only a few months of use. He is sending me a new one on warranty. This should resolve the problem but I will let you know. Canon was prompt and professional on the phone and they did the right thing. I can confirm though that printing black text documents uses all colors of ink. I will likely need to replace most of my ink cartridges when the new print head arrives. Cleaning the print heads uses a huge amount of ink but the driver software fortunately allows you to clean only the pigment black station alone if you want. Did a few scans over the past weeks and I like the scan quality very much. Duplex printing is slow but it works. Canon software still slow and annoying.

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This is my first review of the Canon PIXMA MP990. On first look you kind of get the feeling your looking at a small tank and it feels like it when you lift it up. The setup was easy thought at first it was a little daunting to see all those ink cartridges and a print head to put in. The print head went right in and was easy, just slid in and secure with a lever. It took a few minuets to make sure each ink cartridge was in the correct slot and seated correctly so the light on the end came on. The one place things could go wrong here is a piece of plastic that twist that covers the ink port on the cartridge that might break in the wrong way if you don''t follow directions. The one Doh!! moment I had was when I turned it on it kept indicating a door was open and I just couldn''t see it at first. There''s a very small door inside the print just under the printer platen that must have pulled down when I was taking all the tape used to secure the printer. So then it was all set up and I turned it on. It whirred away for awhile priming the print head and going through multiple diagnostics till it was ready. It had some special paper just for the setup that almost felt like thin cardboard that it used for the test print, they have some special instructions for it in the documentation.

I''ve got mine set up so my XP machine is connected with a USB connection and I have a WiFi connection to my Vista Laptop down stairs. I don''t have my router password protected (shame on me!!!) so it wasn''t much of a test setting it up to connect the laptop to it. You do have some special software you need to load on the remote machines so it can see the printer and also scan to it but that wasn''t any issue setting up.

So far I haven''t really done much printing on this machine put I have noticed that only after printing a manual of around 60 pages, one 8 by 11 B/W photo, and a couple of smaller 4 by 5''s that the colored ink is already down by a quarter so I''m guessing it uses up ink fairly fast, time will tell. The black ink so far is showing no usage. So I can''t say much about usage but the color of the photos is very good using both the Canon paper and some cheaper photo paper I have.

For the scanner so far I am very impressed. Looking at the build quality through the glass you can see that the scan head runs on two steel rods while most other multi printers I''ve taken apart just run on a plastic track built into the floor of the scanner. I do highly recommend that you use the Mp Navigator EX that comes with the software. I''m not sure if it was just the old Paint Shop Pro 8 software I was using or you can only see the higher scan settings in the EX software but I could only see 1200dpi in the Paint Shop software and I can see 4800dpi using the EX software. For color photos it looks like 600dpi is as high as I can get while with slides and negatives you can go up to the 4800dpi. So I guess if you want to do 1200dpi for photos you would have to use a separate software. It does though recognize the edges of the photos and will scan them separately. Using the special setup for the slides was a little puzzling even with a diagram as it took me awhile to realize I just had to take the film holder out and lay the rest of the holder back on the platen matching up the hole with the pin on the side of the platen. There is a separate lighted platen under the large while backing that comes off that lights up when you tell it you are using negatives or slides. I was amazed at the scan at 1200dpi how well one of the larger 35 millimeter slides came out. I printer it and it looked like a regular photo. I even took a magnifying glass to it and could hardly see any pixelation.

Well that''s about all I can think of right now, I''ll try and keep this updated as I use things or any issues come up.

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I have professional scanner and printer but did not need all the equipment i had so i decided to get this one not before reading everything i could and checking personally this baby. i was so surprised it is by far the best all-in-one there. the quality of scanned pics and the copies you get from this one. you will save all your pics and get rid of the originals.my negatives have more than 20 years and still i was able to get the pics look better than the positive original ones. dont be fooled, get this all-in-one, follow instructions step-by-step and you will be using it in about 20 minutes, and once you start using it you wont stop till all the pics are digitalized. no noise, no waste of ink or paper, just the perfect equipment for a semi-pro. you can use this as copier, printer and scanner, it is y far way better than fax machine. Instead of faxing a document just scan it and email it. i give you my word, you will love not just this all-in-one but your pictures. you will look at then in a different way.i hope you have great time using it, as i do using mine.

I''ve owned my Canon Pixma MP990 for nearly three months and finally decided to post a review. I''ve owned HP printers as well as Canon Pixma models MP780 and MX700. The MP990 is by far the best printer I''ve ever used. From some of the comments other reviewers posted, I can''t comprehend how we can own the same model printer and have such different experiences.

Setup was a breeze. Contrary to what one person posted, there''s no need for a USB cable if you''re configuring the MP990 to work in a wireless connection with a Windows PC. In order to ensure I had the latest driver and other software, I downloaded them from Canon''s website rather than use the included CD. This was the first time I''d ever used a wireless printer with my PCs; the process to get everything operating properly couldn''t be any easier.

The MP990 is quiet, reliable, and I really like the large LCD (especially after using the tiny one on a Canon MX700). While none of my Canon printers have a problem with jamming, the MX700 sometimes pulls sheets of paper in crooked. No problem of any kind with the MP990. Photo and text quality are superb. I was amused by another reviewer who complained how it requires strong fingers to remove the orange plastic caps on Canon ink cartridges. I''m a petite, middle-aged woman and have absolutely no problem snapping off these caps (neither should any reasonably bright child). The MP990 doesn''t have a fax capability. Considering how much trouble my MX700''s fax feature caused with my phone''s answering machine, I''m glad there''s no fax. With the use of e-mail attachments, I rarely need a fax capability these days.

My sole objection to the MP990 is Canon''s decision to use substantially smaller ink cartridges in this model compared with my other Canon printers. While these cartridges hold less ink, their prices aren''t any lower; funny how that works. Also, the MP990 uses a gray ink cartridge which no local store carries. Since I buy ink cartridges from Amazon that''s not a problem for me, but it''s a good idea to keep a supply on hand since the gray ink cartridge is very difficult to find in stores.

Prices for the MP990 seem to fluctuate greatly. I paid $169 with free shipping; I''ve seen them on Amazon for as low as $148 with free shipping to as much as $275. Assuming you buy one at a decent price, I think the MP990 is an outstanding printer, especially in a wireless network.