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It offers great quality, but again, fading ink is bad, as well as poor results on B&W prints. I do not care about print speed, so quality is my only concern. The only reason I don't give this printer 5 stars is that the ink is the kind that fades after about two years. Otherwise, great printer.
If anything, the color from the i9900 "pops" somewhat better than that from the 3800. Interestingly, the color gamut of the i9900 is very similar to that of my 3800. Dye based prints produced by the i9900 are more likely to fade in direct light and must be displayed under glass to achieve the longest life.
For the last 4 and a half years, I have been using Media Street inks in the printer with a continuous ink system (CIS). The printer is still going strong and it is a superb dye based printer. I purchased the i9900 from Amazon in November, 2004 - five years ago.
Key parts like the print heads are still available and used in later model printers, so it is relatively easy to maintain.In April, 2009, I purchased an Epson 3800 pigment-based printer to be able to print 17x24" images and to create images with longer longevity that can be displayed without glass. Because of the very low cost of the continuous ink system, I'm using the i9900 a lot more than the Epson 3800, especially when working image corrections before a final print. Because I use non Canon inks and papers, I create my own printer profiles with a Datacolor PrintFix colorimeter).
I've been through three print heads while printing a thousand 4x6's on Canon Photo Paper Plus glossy, hundreds of 8.5x11's and a couple of hundred 13x19's on Ilford Classic Pearl paper.
The cleaning also squirts the ink into a tiny foam pad inside the printer that eventually has to be replaced. I've owned the i9900 for 2-3 years now. Mostly I print 4x6's and 5x7's and on rare occasion something larger. Since I've used a lot of non-Canon inks and non-Canon papers, I had to build my own color profiles anyway (using Monaco EZ Color, a so-so product itself).* It appears incapable of handling arbitrary-sized papers (only supports the pre-defined ones in its driver) and appears unable to print envelopes.
Thus I always have to drill into the printer settings every printing session.* The replacement print heads cost about $85, which I've had to do once so far after trying every sanctioned and unsanctioned method of cleaning to no avail. * Though I applaud Canon for at least providing some downloadable color profiles, they only provide them for THEIR paper (none of the other excellent photo paper brands), and they use screwy names. The stupid thing is you can't set the defaults so they'll persist across reboots or even reliable among different applications. Fortunately it's possible to store multiple settings as named profiles within the driver.
It's pretty compact and folds up nicely (with built-in dust cover) considering how large of prints it can make.* I've never had a paper feed problem, and the paper path has less than 90-degrees of bend in it.Here are my gripes with it:* EVERY time I turn it on, it insists on going through its automatic ink level checking / nozzle priming gyrations. There are a number of options in it that you'll need to tweak from default, especially if you do color management. I bought it for the comparatively wide gamut (due to 8 different inks), its ability to print edge-to-edge in many sizes, and it's nearly-poster-size capacity. There is NO way to select to clean only individual colors, so when I had one consistent problem with magenta clogging, it was always wasting ink in multiple cartridges.* Its Windows driver is terrible.
* It is prone to ink nozzles clogging if not used constantly, and the self-cleaning features use a TON of ink. I've had enough problems with it though that I'm starting to look into digital printing labs to do at least some of my prints.Good things I like about it:* It is capable of producing very nice photographic prints* It does very well with the edge-to-edge printing* It seems pretty fast for the print quality.* Mechanically and externally it's a fairly nice design. This process is annoyingly loud, slow, and wastes ink.
Prints are sharp even up close. I especially like the fact that the tanks have no chip and are very inexpensive. Since I fill my own, I purchased a spare printhead as a precaution but I have never had to use it. I keep a spare set of tanks at all times and never let them get to low or run dry.
I got the i9900 a few years ago on Amazon and liked it so much I bought another one used on Ebay. Just remember to use the printer at least once a week. As I own a Canon 5D, I do a lot of 13 by 19 printing and have never had any problems. I refill my own tanks with ink from [.].
I had one printer repaired (surge tank) and was told by the tech person that this printer is easy to repair and the parts are very reasonably priced. I rotate the two printers every few months to keep them in shape. and have never had to even run a cleaning cycle. I have purcased only Canon tanks and installed nylon screws in the filling holes to allow for easy filling.
DON'T BY THIS. I9900 IS JUNK JUST LKIE EVERYONE ELSE I HAVE SPENT MORE TIME TRYING TO GET IT TO WORK PROPERLY AND NOW IT WILL NOT TURN ON.
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