Yesterday I threw a half full printing cassette of canon cp520. It jammed inside the printer and snapped when I tried to get it out. $10 just went in a typical tape snapping sound (a cassette lasts for 30 printouts). The tape inside is a bit funny though. Firstly it is extremely thin, it is very long, and then lastly it has different colours (CMY). It looks like a scarf from future. This is the only funny thing about yesterday's incident.
The printer itself is small, compact but a bit heavy and transformer is jut too big. Of course it has other cons too like missing USB host port, card reader, no on/off switch, and the bright blue light on top is always activated. In the package you get paper and a printing cassette for only couple of prints (3 or 5 can't remember) which results in a huge anticlimax when you buy that printer, come home to print some photos but alas, you can print just a few of them. So when you buy printer like this always take a pack of cassettes and paper (as I did). Word of caution though, 103 page printing pack costs 2/3 of the printer price which is not cheap up front but it is certainly cheaper than classic inkjet printers.
On the positive side, the quality of printouts is great for normal photographs. Underwater ones are too dark though. I'm still experimenting how to adjust them in advance. The problem is that some pictures turn out medium dark and others turn too dark with no apparent pattern (my sample rate is probably too small).
The price per page is somewhat low, certainly lower than inkjet printers and lower than the printing shops. To be honest, you pay up front for the printer when you compare it with the printing shop where you don't have up front payments. But in my opinion it balances out because in my case it is very inconvenient to go to a printing shop because the nearest to me is 30km away.
Another problem I have with this printer is dust. I had 2 photos now who had a dust "straw" (which looks ugly and unnatural so you have to throw it away) visible on the printout even though I always keep the printer closed when not in use. Moreover, the printer as you can see from the (low quality) pictures it is placed on the desk, not the floor.
So this concludes my shorter and (hopefully) more frequent posts. For any clarification or explanation, feel free to use comments.
Minor update: it is interesting how this printer has a an extremely small driver. It weights just a few megabytes which is pretty extraordinary because all modern drivers tend to be extremely bloated and in a range of 60+MB, sometimes even more than 100MB. Consider that the drivers and app for watching TV with my pinnacle usb hybrid tv tuner weigh more than 350MB+ (and this is only installation) which is completely unacceptable.
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