Canon ImagePrograf 2000 Review - Part 3

Setting Up The Printer

Prior portions of this review can be found her:

• Part 1 - Getting It Into The House
• Part 2 - Unboxing, Moving, and General Impressions

As one can see from Parts 1 and 2 of this review, getting the printer to where it needed to go was no small task. It is very clear to me that there is simply no way the 48 inch Canon IPG 4000 could have made it up to my 'Photography Man-Cave'.  Perhaps one day in a different location.....

Moving the printer to where it needed to go required turning it onto its side and lifting it vertically to get it up a narrow and winding staircase. There is no problem doing this (assuming one doesn't drop the nearly 200 pound device.....between the weight of the printer and the size of one of the two the fairly burly people doing the moving, one of the wooden steps actually broke) as long as the printer is new and not charged with ink.  Once filled with ink you would do well to keep the printer fairly level.

Reading the setup manual that came with the printer made me a little nervous, as it sounded like it might be a bit complicated. There were three items that worried me.  Most concerning was the bit about installing the printhead by yourself.  Ah, that printhead......the Achilles heel of my old Epson 7900! Second, the ink cartridge insertion levers seemed far more complicated than my old Epson, where you just pushed the cartridges into the slot and were done with it.  Finally, there were some adjustment parameters to be made.

Well, as it turns out, the whole setup process was actually very simple. In fact, you could pretty much do it by simply following the directions that the printer itself gives you on its LED control screen. The screen tells you what to do step by step, along with images of what you should be doing. My concerns really were unfounded. This was very nicely done by Canon! 

As it turns out, the oh so delicate printhead was extremely easy to insert. You simply open two lever locks, drop it in, and close the two lever locks. That's it!  If you can manage to get it from the package to the printer without dropping it you are good to go. That was no easy feat despite the fact that it only weighs a few ounces considering that I just knocked my coffee over onto the keyboard of my laptop while I am typing this.....really!! How the laptop is still working must be a miracle.

Ink cartridge insertion was just as easy. The Epson cartridges were pressurized and could therefore be inserted on a horizontal plane by just pushing them in. I don't know if the Canon cartridges are pressurized or not, but they load on a vertical plane and the slot has to be deep in order to accommodate the largest size cartridges. This means that if you were using smaller cartridges you would have to stick your arm down into the slot if they were inserted by simply pushing. Instead, there is a 'carriage' which holds the cartridge and which is controlled by a lever that lowers the cartridge into place and then locks. Again, it is very easy to do and once you do one it takes only a couple of seconds to do the others. As a nice touch, there are little plastic tabs on the cartridges that match the ink color slots and prevent your inserting the wrong color cartridge into any of the slots.  I decided not to test this feature out :)

Lastly, the printhead adjustments......nothing to fear. They are all automatic. All you have to do is feed the printer paper (supplied with the printer) when the LED panel asks for it. Once again, the process was really quite easy and required no user 'decision making'.

The printer offers various options for connectivity including USB (2.0), Ethernet cable, and wireless. Since it sits right next to my computer and I intermittently have problems with my router I simply connected via USB. One thing that is very nice is that once connected you simply open your web browser and type in a URL that you are given and are presented with the latest driver to install along with a nice array of software.  This includes accounting software that lets you keep track of the cost of your printing, a media configuration kit that lets you put together printer settings for custom media (I mostly print on third party papers) and several other useful programs.

My next (and final) installment of this review will talk about using the printer (including an annoying quirk) and the admittedly subjective quality of the prints (spoiler....the print quality is really superb to my eye).

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