CANON PIXMA MINI260 COLOR INK CARTRIDGE

Canon PIXMA mini260 Review

Overview:

Canon decided to add a compact, portable PIXMA mini260 printer to their selection.  It is a powerful machine packed full of useful functions to ensure photos are of lab-quality.  Popular features for the machine are its Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, memory card slots, and high-definition printing.  The Canon PIXMA mini260 is an isolated photo printer with dimensions of 8.9 inches in width, 3.3 inches in height, 8.9 inches in depth, and 4.8 pounds.  It should fit nicely in a duffel back or backpack, or even on a small stand.  The standard, limited 1-year warranty gives peace of mind to the owners.

Pros:

The printer can print borderless 4 x 6 photos in approximately under a minute.  Its resolution is shockingly 9600 x 2400 Color dots per inch.  It is quite surprising to see Canon pack this kind of capability in such a small printer.  The good news, it is portable but will also work with modern operating systems like Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 7, and Mac versions 10.2.8-10.4.x9.  The standard interface is made up of; a High-Speed 2.0 USB port, Direct Print Port (for mobile digital devices), IrDA 1.2 version (JPEG), and an optional Bluetooth.  It's 42 Kilo Bytes of Buffer Ram should allow the user to operate their computer with the printing tasks in the background. 

The printer can produce quality output on media-sizes like 4 x 8 inches, 4 x 6 inches, Credit Card (Wallet-sized) 2.13 x 3.39 inches, and photo stickers.  While printing, the noise-level is respectable at 30 sB, which, is about as quiet as a whisper.  Before printing, users can look at the 2.5 TFT display, which gives a surprisingly accurate image of how it should look when printed on photos.

Users can snap and print from their mobile photo/imaging devices via wireless.  If by, per chance, there are no wireless capable devices; fear not, there is luck.  The memory card slots will take the mainstream memory cards installed on most modern, portable imaging devices.  Its click-connect feature enables users to capture an image and then connect-to-print.  The photos produced by the printer should last 100 years or more, if archived carefully.

The fact that Canon offers the choice of bypassing the PictBridge connection is significantly excellent because it targets a greater range of consumers.  It's nice to see Canon offering a variety of choice in printing from mobile imaging devices.  Consumers who do not have PictBridge capabilities will be pleased to know that the Canon PIXMA mini260 accepts wide-range of compatible memory cards.   The main memory cards compatible with the Canon PIXMA are miniSD™ Card, Memory Stick Pro Duo™, RS-MMC™, Memory Stick Duo™, xD-Picture Card™, MutlimediaCard® Memory Stick Pro™, SD Card™, Memory Stick®, SmartMedia®, MicroDrive, and CompactFlash®.

Cons:

Bluetooth units are optional.  Would be nice to see Canon offer the Bluetooth integrated in the printer.  Bluetooth Unites can only operate within 10 meters of the printer.  Unless there is an important need for people to be in the next room while printing, Bluetooth is not really needed.  It is always a nuisance to go through varying installation set-ups according to the operating system of the computer.  Canon should make the process of installing the printer universal amongst compatible operating systems.  Essentially, no one wants to spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out where to get the drivers.  Some reviews state the printer takes a significant amount of effort to find the drivers for Windows 7 and Windows Vista.