I love my Canon MP530 multi-function printer. I bought it because I just wanted to have a printer that could send faxes, but surprisingly it's become one of my favorite household gadgets.
A few great features:
- Duplex printing
- Batch scanning with the sheet feeder
- Duplex scanning (scan a stack, then flip it, software fixes the order)
- Scans legal sized documents
The usability is so good that I don't hesitate to scan things, even to the point where I routinely archive household documents to PDF. Canon did a great job of integrating the scanning software with the printer. I used to waste a lot of time fiddling around with a flatbed scanner and some quirky scanning software. Without a sheet feeder, it took forever to scan just a few pages. Now, I just drop a stack of documents into the sheet feeder, hit the start button, and a few seconds later I have a PDF.
So the other day, I was pretty sad to discover that my printer would not turn on. I thought maybe the power strip was fried, but after half an hour of plugging and unplugging things, I came to the conclusion that my printer was dead and that I would have to buy another one.
Fortunately, I made a last ditch attempt to Google a solution, and found a CNet forum thread where several people people had the same problem. Turns out that this happens on some printers and the solution is just to unplug the printer for 20 minutes. Half an hour later, I had a working printer instead of a $200 door stop. I hope this post keeps someone else from owning a door stop, too.
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