HP, the Canon IP3000, and Ubuntu
I switched to a Canon printer after buying a couple rounds of HP print cartridges and feeling totally misused. Printer makers have always been into the razor/blade thing, but HP takes it to the extreme.
Surfing, I found that Epson and Canon have pretty good refill prices (I think both have ‘clone’ cartridges). So I watched Techbargains via its rss feed until a good deal popped up. I got a Canon PIXMA IP3000 at NewEgg a while back (for something like $50), and kept it until the old HP ran low on ink (or until tax time, whichever came first). NewEgg is a great site, with good forums and real-world user experiences. The interesting thing about the forums for this printer, was that it seemed that a lot of tech-savy people were abandoning HP over the cartridge cost issue. Really, my new Canon IP3000 (with the packaged set of print cartridges) cost less than a replacement set of cartridges for my HP!
(HP is toast!)
Now, I did sweat a bit this morning, until I discovered that I had a bad USB cable and not a bad printer, but now I’ve got the thing running nicely with either the Windows XP machine, or my every-day computer … running Ubuntu Linux. The trick I picked up on a web search was to tell Ubuntu that I was installing a Canon BJC-7004. That driver seems to work fine.
(The Ubuntu site is slow today, because they’ve just had a release, but I like it! There is a great Unofficial Ubuntu Starter Guide that I used to tune the last release for multimedia, etc. Brilliant!)
June 14th, 2005 at 3:55 pm
Re: your PIXMA IP300 – Funny. I made the exact same switch from HP, for the reasons you outined. Double-sided, full-bleed printing is nice too.
March 11th, 2006 at 1:51 am
Hi,
Your driver suggestion for Ubuntu gave the best results so far, thanks so much for sharing your success in printing, I have been trying for 3 months!!
Paul
April 1st, 2006 at 12:02 am
works a treat as a shared printer also, i can log into a windoze session and get the disc printing software to work through the ubunto box and print my discs :-)
May 17th, 2006 at 3:52 am
Hi,
I am trying to print to a remote Canon iP3000 on an XP Pro box. Are you able to tell me how you shared the printer please?
May 17th, 2006 at 10:35 am
i’m afraid i don’t run that setup right now. ubuntu is another thing entirely.
i can tell you that when i run windows i just ‘press F1 for help’ and that generally works. it works better than most people expect it to.
go to your ‘control panel’ and then ‘printers and faxes’ and then press the F1 key.
May 17th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Sorry, I didn’t express myself too clearly.
I want to print to a remote Canon iP3000 from Linux. (It works fine from XP.)
May 17th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
oh, i didn’t share my printer. sorry.
May 30th, 2006 at 2:12 am
“Sorry, I didn’t express myself too clearly.
I want to print to a remote Canon iP3000 from Linux.”
i cant help you there alan as i are going the other way,
windowsXP>windows app>network(ipaddressOfLinuxBox/PrinterName)ubuntu>ip3000.