It's strange what manufacturers do to shave the costs of a printer. This basic printer is 42x22x12cm and is by no means heavy. It comes with a tri ink cartridge but you can buy a black cartridge as an extra should you print a lot of text pages. This cartridge does not replace the tri colour it sits alongside.

A lot of manufacturers provide ½ toner cartridges with lasers and nowadays some provide ½ size inkjet cartridges for printers. I have reviewed a number of printers where a photo cartridge is an extra - fair enough - as it replaces another cartridge but just to supply a printer with only one cartridge when there is a place for two is a first for me.

See also: Inkjet printers

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However if that is how this entry level offering is to be sold that is how I will review it. Printing the normal nonsensical 200 word document in 'draft' produced 10PPM and this would be suitable for draft purposes as it was rather grey. Printing the more normal 1500 word document spread over four pages with the same 'draft' settings came through at 7PPM. If you printed in a 'normal' mode it was a little slower but the output would be acceptable as it was nearer a true black.

Image printing is one of Canons strong points and while I do not think speed is that important - only quality - three minutes for an A4 borderless page is excellent and looking at the output under a glass for a three ink printer it was excellent.

The Canon bundled software is good allowing you to print four images borderless on a A4 sheet these are close to 15x10cm and while it needs to stretch and contract the images slightly to fit them on an A4 sheet the adjustments are slight. I only wonder why Microsoft do not use the technology as the basic Windows print can only produce four 13x9cm prints and while they may look okay the added size really makes things stand out.

So you get the normal excellent Canon software, one cartridge the tri colour as standard, not that fast printing but quite close to the claimed speed. The actual print speed could be faster for black text documents should you purchase the optional black cartridge. The images printed were good especially when you consider in the form I reviewed it it's only a three ink printer. Printing time for photos is also quite rapid.

Now onto the real problem the only place I can currently find it is Australia. I found a couple of sites in Australia with it at around $60 (Australian) and going to a currency converter finds that the current rate makes this around £25.

The link below provides some information as it currently is not even shown on the Canon website. I have been told it is available from PC World, see the other link but it would not be of interest to me at the price they have it at, halve it and then okay.

http://www.i-tech.com.au/products/item2112.asp