The print head on our old printer died. I think it’s because we tried using (really) cheap ink from 123inkjets.com. The blue cartridge leaked everywhere. They say refilled cartridges (even Staples or OfficeMax) will shorten the lifespan of the print head. But, hey, the Canon cartridges cost about $65 to replace, office supply refills about $55, and 123inkjets.com, $25. However, there’s also a diminishing print quality the cheaper you go. We were spending over a hundred dollars a year on ink alone. So I haven’t decided yet if it’s cheaper to just buy cheap ink and a new printer every 2-3 years. In any case, a new print head costs $60-80 and a new Pixma was on sale for $100. “Upgrading” printers is nice, too.
It’s not hard to set up the printer as a network printer (without the included Windows/Mac setup utilities). The MX860 has wireless capabilities so we can put it anywhere convenient within reach of our router signal and a power outlet, which is nice. I found out that only so much network configuration can be done through the printer’s onboard menus. Here’s the general setup procedure I used.
- Connect the printer’s ethernet to the router
- Read the DHCP’ed IP address from the printer
- From any computer on the network, browse to that IP address
- Set up the wireless settings (SSID, encryption, etc.) to match you network
Choosing to obtain an address automatically or a static IP address doesn’t really matter since clients will look for the printer by mac address anyway - Activate wireless on the printer and make sure you can still connect
- On the clients (Ubuntu 9.10, AMD64 and i386 CPUs), follow these instructions:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?action=printpage;topic=3111999.0 - After the printer is installed via System->Administration->Printing, set the Canon-MX860 to duplex printing (by default) on the Printer Options tab.
But I still had a problem running the scanner from the xsane interface (or, equivically, running scanimage -T from the terminal). I always got: “FAIL Error: Operation was cancelled”. I found this wonderful post that explains how to fix it:
or
http://mp610.blogspot.com/2008/04/give-your-scanner-new-freshly-sane.html
To get this working, here are the steps to take:
1) You need some usb libraries, so, in a terminal type:
sudo apt-get install libusb-dev build-essential libsane-dev
2) To get the sane backends from git you need git-core. If you don’t already have it, type this (also in a terminal):
sudo apt-get install git-core
3) Now use the git that was just installed to get the sane backends using the following command:
git clone git://git.debian.org/sane/sane-backends.git
That downloads the backends and puts them in a folder called sane-backends in your home folder.
4) Change directory into the new sane-backends folder and compile them:
cd sane-backends
./configure –prefix=/usr –sysconfdir=/etc –localstatedir=/var
make <— this one takes a while
sudo make install
Now everything is installed, but you still won’t be able to scan (except as root) until you set up some permissions.
5) You need to edit a file, but you need to be root to edit it, so:
sudo gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules
and add the following 2 lines:
# Canon CanoScan Lide 100
ATTRS{idVendor}==”04a9″, ATTRS{idProduct}==”1904″, ENV{libsane_matched}=”yes”
save the file, exit gedit, exit terminal, reboot, and…
Everything works!
