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From: Vincent on 7 Jun 2005 20:44
We were considering buying a Canon PIXMA iP3000 because these are the
first printers we have ever seen that finally quit ripping people off
quite so much on ink. The whole printer ink jet market, until now,
has been a scam, making you spend an average of $40-$60 buy new print
heads and cartridges for all three colors because one color runs out.
That is like having to replace your gas tank, fuel pump, radiator,
water pump, windshield washer tank and wiper motors, because you ran
out of gas or got too low on radiator fluid. Oh, and by the way,
there are no gauges, or transparent tanks, and no way to check the
fluid levels. Just one idiot light that says you are low on one of
your fluids. Time to replace all of the above to make sure you get
the right one.

The PIXMA printers are the first ones we have seen that have separate
transparent cartridges for each color that you can see the ink level
in and are easy to refill or replace without buying a new print head.

However, Canon is trying to make sure you pay royalties to Apple or
pay Microsoft to run on an insecure system full of spyware in order to
use their printers. There is no printer control language (PCL)
documentation or PPD files available. I called Canon's tech support
at 1-800-828-4040 and they refused to provide any technical
documentation to run their printers. Charlie, the supervisor I spoke
with, said that they did not have that information, and that to have it
would be of no use to them. I said, "Having the PCL documentation to
provide to people in the open source community so that they can write
drivers and open the market of millions of potential customers for
your printers from the NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux communities
is of no use to you?" For the most part, he kept evading questions
about his statement. He also said they write their own drivers even
though he kept claiming that they did not have the specifications to
write drivers. He said the printers are made in Japan and they are
the only ones who have the driver documentation. Yet he also claimed
to have no email address or phone number to contact the branch in
Japan.

In other words, Canon is boycotting the open source community and
trying to make you run only on proprietory commercial platforms in
order to use their printers.


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