Canon Pixma MP210 Photo All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2175B002)

I am in love with my new Pixma MP210 after using it intensively for 3 weeks to prepare for college graduate course teaching. I agree with everything positive that has been said in previous reviews plus these points that did not show up in previous reviews:

OCR function- can scan text into a word document so I can cut, paste, and edit the text. Comes with a preview and correct text software function that lets you easily clean up the scrambled text.

One thing I miss: when scanning you cannot reduce the page to get wider margins. You can do that with the copy function and then scan your copies, but not directly in scan (e.g. 90% scan).

File name only allows 20 characters which is too short for me to name book chapters that I've scanned. But you can correct that once you save it as a word file on your desktop.

It sits nicely on my desk next to my keyboard and monitor. Nice to have printing, copying, and scanning so easily next to me. Paper feeder works, but paper supply sits a little crooked. Paper does not come flying out at you which is another plus over my old printer.

The buttons are not as bad as the other reviews said. The manual leaves a little to be desired: It was a little difficult to figure out how to do the OCR function--for example, it didn't tell me to "choose" my scanner so the software would be connected to the Canon PIXMA. It comes with two softwares--one for scanning and one for OCR. So maybe some people will think this is clunky to have to move between two softwares. But both work great! Faster than my 2 year old Epson stand alone scanner and the cover is more manageable than the Epson's (which just fell down on me all the time!)

Okay, so it doesn't feed, collate, and staple--but for that I go to my office.
Canon Pixma MP210 Photo All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2175B002)

Don't get me wrong, it works fine and the quality is "good" but the MAJOR problem with this product is that the ink runs dry almost immediately - I am forever running to Staples or Office Depot and spending 30 bucks for a b/w and a color cartridge. The b/w will print MAYBE 2 scripts and the color? Horrible. After printing 6 8x10 photo's (yes, I understand this printer isn't for photo's, but when you need a presentation...) the color is gone. That equates to about 3 bucks a page!!!

Pay the money and get a printer where the ink will last.

Grreat printer for the price.
Have tried all features and
they work well. Only drawback would
be the amount of ink involved.

I received my Canon mp210 and successfully got it working on my Debian Linux machine with little effort. It seems to be a very good product and since the installation was so simple I'll give a quick guide to get it working.

Visit for the drivers:
http://support-au.canon.com.au/EN/search?v%3aproject=ABS-EN&binning-state=model%3d%3dPIXMA%20MP210%0amenu%3d%3dDownload%0aos%3d%3dLinux&

I used alien to convert the scangear mp210 driver from rpm to deb.
After installing the needed packages you can use the gnome-cups-manager to install the printer.

For the scanner a little more work is required by following the instructions at:
http://mp610.blogspot.com/2008/02/canon-mp210-and-mp520-join-party.html

The images seem good enough. The software, however, is SO SO anti-intuitive. Every little thing I want it to do requires 10 minutes of hunting through the program to find where the function is and how to apply it.

I wish EPSON printers would make a comeback.