Canon PIXMA MP530 Office All-in-One Printer

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that made scanning possible.

Since the black cartridge was not quite empty I thought the scanner would keep working as long as I never printed. WRONG AGAIN! I was able scan about two times. The third time the black cartridge had gone empty and now NOTHING would work. The other cartridges also started showing up as empty as well. I looked and the cartridges ARE empty. So HOW exactly were the ink cartridges going empty if I wasn't printing? There are two possible explanations. One, every time you turn the printer on and off it could be spending ink doing a "cleaning". Two, the ink could be evaporating. My guess is it's both. With both sets of cartridges ALL the cartridges have gone empty about the same time. I estimate I paid about $1.60 a page for the amount of printing I did with the second set of cartridges. THAT'S AN OUTRAGE! Looking at the negative reviews I can see I'm not the only one having this problem.

And by the way lets be clear about something. I mentioned I went back to using my old printer. I'm not going to mention which one. But I will say that printer sat for awhile before I went back to using it. I don't print frequently so we're talking about a year before I went back to using the old standby. And the ink cartridges had been used a quite a bit before I stopped using it--easily over 100 pages. But when I went back to using the old standby the ink had NOT evaporated. I've done a fair amount of printing with those SAME old ink cartridges since I started using that printer again. Between 35 and 50 pages I would guess--maybe more. The black is getting low but they are STILL not empty. The important thing I want to note is the cartridges on my old printer are a FRACTION the size of the Canon printer's cartridges. You'd think the Canon cartridges would last 5 times longer.

As far as I'm concerned the Canon ink cartridges for the MP530 printer are specifically and purposely design to go empty at an absurdly fast rate--even if you leave it sitting. It should be illegal for Canon to do that. At a BARE minimum there needs to be a consumer fraud investigation opened regarding the excessive use of ink on these printers. These printers really need to just be pulled from the market. In addition it would be nice if a class action suit were opened so that those of us who were burned buying this printer can recover some of our money. On a more personal level I'd very much like to see the people responsible for putting this printer on the market tarred and feathered and the whole affair posted on Youtube. In lieu of that it would do my heart good to see them working in the mailroom or cleaning toilets.

Canon PIXMA MP530 Office All-in-One Printer

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quality mode...it just zips through.

6. Ease of use- The manual wasn't even needed, other than setup.

7. Packing- Second to none...it took me an hour just to get all the tape off. I don't think this could be damaged in shipment, unless it was crushed.

8. Higher end Features- duplex scanning and faxing, and the ability to have two different paper trays to choose from is unusual in this price point. Kudos!

I can't imagine anyone not being pleased with this scanner. Works perfectly with my Mac (excellent bundled software, by the way), and I haven't had a problem out of it yet.

Canon PIXMA MP530 Office All-in-One Printer

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you cannot scan or fax, even though this doesn't require any ink!

I would have given this printer one star, but the printer does well when it works, but I would not buy this printer again, and I think consumers need to beware of this defect before their purchase. Check your favorite search engine and you'll see this is a well documented problem.

**Update**

Here is part of the latest email that I got from Canon Support:

"The ink tank error message that you are getting is something that does
happen on occasion if the computer chip on the front of the ink tank
goes bad. There are a variety of reasons this can occasionally happen,
from improper storage at a retailer to it being damaged when being
inserted. We typically replace the ink tank first and the vast majority
of the time that will take care of the problem. "