New Printer, Yay!

I got Geoffrey through his new student orientation at FGCU on Monday and Tuesday, walking miles (it seemed) in the broiling sun with a heat index of 104 degrees. In between walking from information sessions, I drove home to check on Lowell and make sure he was OK. He seems to be recovering well and the worst thing he's experiencing is, believe it or not, back spasms. His massage therapist made a house call (thank heavens) and between that and muscle relaxers and tylenol, he's perking up a little.

Just before Lowell's operation I started researching printers. I was so tempted by Laser printers, but they are just so expensive. I finally found a bunch of reviews of the Canon Pixma 620 that says it's even better than the newer Pixmas, which came out a few months ago so it would be worth looking for this particular model. The reviews by consumers and CDNet, Amazon.com etc. are almost all glowing with regard to miserly ink use and great quality prints that are almost laser quality.

Yesterday I the old HP printer died and I found a Pixma 620 on sale for 50% off at Staples. They are clearing out stuff for the newer models. So I got this thing and it's like night and day, the difference in print quality. Such smooth transitions within colors, and no banding on photo prints. Plus it's one of those all-in-ones, it scans and copies too. I don't need the fax function since I already have a fax machine. Perfect!

What's cool is that this printer has the kind of ink where you only have to replace the colors you use up. It has the cyan, magenta and yellow inks, plus two blacks, one for text printing and one for graphic printing. The reviews said you can get over 2,000 pages before you have to replace the colors! I was having to buy new HP tri-color cartridges several times a month and even at Sam's, it was very expensive.

So I'm such a happy camper! This is a wireless printer too, so once I gird my loins to try setting up the wireless feature, everyone in the house can use it to print. Right now the kids have to put things on a key chain drive from their laptops then move over to my computer to print. Now they can just print directly from their own printers, and you can print directly from a memory card too.

Really, it's ridiculous how happy I am about this new printer. It doesn't take much to put a little joy in my life!