A few weeks ago my sturdy Dell desktop computer from 2001 decided to finally die. The unfortunate part of this is that it was my only real PC with XP on it, to host my Lexmark X6170 printer on my network. The Lexmark X6170 has been a faithful member of my house for around six years. With no issues until we started upgrading our computers with Vista. The X6170 was only partially upgraded to work on Vista and even then was fairly unusable. Even though I was a key member of developing the drivers that ran the X6170, and many of the first few generations of Lexmark’s All-In-One printers, while at Jetsoft Development… it was time to replace it.
While my family was out one night, we were fairly close to Best Buy and I figured I would stop in and price a few printers. One of the first ones I saw was the Canon Pixma MP620B Blue Edition. It supported ‘wireless printing.’ Which was intriguing to me, as my house is networked by wireless. After reading over the box I saw that it also supported USB and wired printing. It was on sale for just $99.99, a savings of $50. Setting it up was not trivial but the directions that came with it made it pretty clear.
Once I had the printer configured on my wireless network and on my personal computer it was time to install it on my wife’s. Any installs after the first one are pretty trivial and went pretty smooth. Now all the computers in my house are able to talk to this printer without issue.
When I bought this I assumed that only printing was able to be done over the network because scanning is not a simple thing to program for on a local connection, much less a network connection. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this machine actually does support scanning and printing without having to be directly connected to a computer. I was also surprised to find out that the machine also supports ‘pushing’ documents to computers. So if my wife wants to scan a document to her file system she can do it from the printer and does not have to be around her computer. The printer will scan and save the file on her hard drive.
The next added benefit is the numerous memory card slots on the box. Not only can you access those from the printers 2.5 inch LCD screen but you can access them as a shared drive on any connected computer. This saves battery life on the camera as it doesn’t have to put the power out to copy the files from the memory card to the computer.
My initial ratings on this computer is certainly a 4.75/5.00. The software is a bit clunky, but most software bundled with these devices are. Which leads me to my final point on this machine. When I figured out that it was also a scan over the network printer, I made another assumption that my third party scanning applications would work with it. That they didn’t have valid TWAIN drivers to allow for that. I was wrong again. I opened up my favorite application, again one that I had the pleasure of developing for several years at Jetsoft Development, Art-Copy. Sure enough I get the simplistic interface and advanced features of Art-Copy and the convenience of a network scanner
I certainly recommend this product if you are in the market for an affordable, and flexible all in one device.