My New Printer

I recently upgraded my big laptop, the one I use for all my graphics work, to Windows 7 64-bit, and was pleasantly surprised that almost everything was compatible, apart from my file management program (a Windows Explorer replacement – I loathe Windows Explorer, which could be improved in oh-so many ways!) and my scanner. I was very disappointed that Canon had not provided an up-to-date driver for this scanner, because it’s a good one, and I’m used to it. As my small laptop also runs on Windows 7, I can’t use that with it either.

So… reluctantly I decided I’d have to buy a new scanner. (There is some software available to buy, which works with many different scanners, but when I downloaded the trial version, it wouldn’t work because the computer first has to recognise the scanner, which mine refused to do.)

When I looked online, I was horrified at how much I’d have to spend on a half-way decent one, and went off to bed in disgust. The next day, I went on the Crafter’s Companion forum, which I’m ashamed to say I don’t visit as often as I should (they’re a great bunch, and it’s full of information and fun) and without intending to, I immediately found a post about printers, and which was the best for people working with different media such as thick card. My Epson photo printer with its 6 separate ink cartridges is a nice printer, and doesn’t need replacing, but it is hopeless with anything thicker than very thin card, which is pretty useless for a lot of what I want to do. Someone on the forum recommended a Canon all-in-one printer/scanner which took everything she could throw at it, so I had a look, and found they were less expensive than stand-alone scanners! (Something really crazy going on here…)

I decided to solve both my problems in one go, and ordered one from Amazon, and it came today. It’s a Canon Pixma MP280 and I got it for £29, free postage! I am highly delighted. So far all I’ve done is get it out of the box and set it up on the desk – after this I crashed and had to rest for the rest of the day, until about 11.30 p.m. when I started to feel better. I’ve been working in my ARTHaven since then, so tomorrow I’m intending to install the driver and get it all connected up to the computer, and we’ll see what this new baby can do for me!

Here it is, just out of the box.

I had a terrible job getting all that orange sellotape off it – the instruction book said to remove it, but half of it wouldn’t come off because you had to follow the next instructions and open the thing up to pull the last bits off! The instruction book isn’t that brilliant, I don’t think – I hate having to battle through loads of different languages etc. etc. I shall probably use the online pdf English version once I’ve got it set up.

Here it is in its final position, ready for use as soon as I can get the driver installed.

Smart, isn’t it. Just hope it works as good as it looks!! I’ll let you know how I get on with it.