Canon i950 review

The Canon Bubble jet i950 Photo Printer

Page 1.

The S900 has proved to be a very successful printer and arguably a tough act to follow. The Canon i950 printer succeeds the S900, but what improvements has Canon made with print quality and performance over the S900? Can Canon pull it off again? Let's find out.

What's in the box?

1. The Canon i950 printer
2. Six ink tanks (CMYK + PM & PC)
3. Print head
4. Power cable (will vary according to region)
5. Installation CD (Win XP, 2000 & Mac OS X)
6. BJ Solution disk with software applications
7. 4 x 6 Sample pack of paper and warranties

After removing the usual packaging we have all the components to get going, with the exception of the most vital part, the USB printer cable. I would love to know why this is not included (no other printer manufacturer includes it either).

Installation.

As with all other Canon printers I have reviewed, the print head has to be fitted as a first step. Plug in the printer and turn on, if the Add New Hardware Wizard kicks in then press cancel. Open the front cover, the head cradle moves into position and remove the remaining packing tape. This was awkward to do, or maybe my hands are just getting bigger. Remove the protective orange cover on the print head making sure you don't touch either the contacts or the print head nozzles (move your mouse over contacts picture). Do not attempt to replace the orange cover once removed.


New design print head	Contacts should not be touched

Press the power on button	Remove all tape and lift print head lever

Carefully insert print head	Lower lever to secure ink tanks

The print head, which is a different design to the S900, clicked home in the cradle with no problems. The new head incorporates a new Micro-Nozzle head that delivers 2 picoliter ink drops using Canon's own MicroFine Droplet Technology. I will return to this at a later stage in this review. The ink tanks must be fitted in the correct order, fitting them in the wrong order will result in weird colours and the need to do a thorough head cleaning routine. The order of colours has been changed from the S900, make sure you follow the colour key at the base of the print head. Once this stage has been completed you can install the drivers and align the print head.

Driver installation and setting up the printer.

With the print head and inks fitted, the next step is to install the printer driver. Turn off the power to the printer, disable any Anti virus software and close any active applications. Place the installation CD in your drive, this will auto run. Follow the on-screen instructions.


Press Cancel if this screen appears	Turn off any Anti-Virus software

Press the green button to start the installation process	When this screen appears, turn on the printer

You will be promted to re-boot your system at the end of the installation process, the i950 will now be your default printer.