i9900 Color Bubble Jet Photo Printer

Canon's wide-carriage 13 x 19-inch inkjet i9900 Photo Printer features fast, borderless printing, new red and green ink cartridges for rich, accurate color rendition, industry leading 4800 x 2400 dpi resolution, microscopic 2 picoliter ink droplets, PictBridge direct printing and both USB 2.0 Hi-speed and Firewire interfaces. The i9900 will be available starting in May 2004 for a suggested list price $499.99. The i9900 is the first in its class to offer eight individual ink tanks. Canon's exclusive ChromaPLUS 8-color ink system adds individual red and green ink tanks to the cyan, magenta, yellow, black, photo cyan and photo magenta inks that are commonly found on six-color printers. The red ink tank allows for an approximately 60% increase in the orange/red gamut over six-color printing and provides for previously unobtainable orange hues and well as richer reds. The green ink adds about 30% increase in green gamut as compared to six-color printing and creates more accurate and deeper greens in grass and foliage. Canon's dye inks produce higher levels of glossiness, more vivid colors, reduced graininess and better contrast photo quality when compared with traditional pigment-based inks used in conventional printers. Canon has increased the printer's photo quality by doubling the maximum color resolution to 4800 x 2400 dpi from the earlier generation i9100 photo printer. To match the look of mini lab prints, the i9900 photo printer supports edge-to-edge borderless printing in 4x6, 5x7, 8.5x11 and 13x19 inch sizes. Photo printing speeds on the i9900 printer remain significantly faster than the competition. Users can print a 4 x 6" borderless photo in about 38 seconds, a 5 x 7" borderless photo in approximately 47 seconds, an 8.5 x 11" borderless photo in about 84 seconds and a full 13 x 19" borderless photograph in under three minutes. Direct photo printing is made possible without a computer thanks to the front-mounted PictBridge USB port on the i9900 photo printer. PictBridge is an industry standard for digital printers, digital cameras and digital camcorders that allows the direct printing of images from PictBridge compatible digital cameras and camcorders to a PictBridge compatible printer, regardless of brand or manufacturer, without need of a computer. Compatible with both Windows and Mac platforms (Windows XP, Windows 2000/Millennium Edition/98 and Mac OS (8.6 to 9.x) and Mac OSX v 10.2.1 to 10.3.x.), the i9900 photo printer also includes the Zoom Browser EX (Windows) and ImageBrowser (Mac) image management software, and PhotoStitch (for Windows and Mac) that makes composite images from shots taken separately.

New ChromaPLUS 8-color ink system adds red and green inks to extend the range of the orange/red and green color gamuts

Fast printing: 4 x 6" borderless in about 38 seconds

6,144 nozzles for exceptional speed and quality

2-picoliter MicroFine Droplet Technology with 4800 x 2400 dpi resolution

Borderless printing in 4 x 6", 5 x 7", 8.5 x 11" and 13 x 19" sizes

Individually replaceable ink tanks lowers your printing costs

Computer-less PictBridge and Bubble Jet Direct USB printing

High-speed USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces

The i9900 is a stylish looking, dark gray and silver colored printer that will turn your computer workspace into a digital photo lab. This is not a small printer, it requires an open space of about 2 x 3 x 2 ft.(WxDxH) when printing. Setup is straight forward and can be accomplished by following the steps outlined on the included big page of directions. You first install the removable print head assembly, unwrap and install the eight ink tanks, install the driver software, connect the input cable and turn on the printer. Installation on my Windows XP machine went without a hitch even connected through an 8-port USB 2.0 hub. It took a total of about fifteen minutes to unpack, setup and be ready to make the first print. The i9900 only has one paper path, the top auto sheet loader. Its media choices and paper handling is not as flexible as the Epson 2200. Canon only claims compatibility with their own brand photo papers whereas the Epson can print on its own photo papers and non-Epson art papers of varying thicknesses because of a rear, straight-through paper path. What it lacks in media flexibility the i9900 more than makes up for with its blazing print speeds. Its predecessor, the i9100, was the fastest printer in its class cranking out a borderless 13 x 19" print in less than five minutes. The i9900 now makes that same print in a blistering two minutes and forty seconds!

The i9900 features an array of input ports on the back including USB 2.0, IEEE1394 FireWire (Mac OS only) and USB 1.1. Note that all three ports can be connected to different computers simultaneously. It's compatible with both Windows and Mac platforms (Windows XP, Windows 2000/Millennium Edition/98 and Mac OS (8.6 to 9.x) and Mac OSX v 10.2.1 to 10.3.x.)

PictBridge USB port for direct printing from many of today's digital cameras and video camcorders. Users with a PictBridge- enabled digital camera connect to the printer using their standard USB download cable. Compatible digital cameras are now available from Canon, Casio, Fuji, HP, Konica, Kyocera, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, Ricoh, Samsung and Sanyo.

When the camera and printer are connected, the camera's color LCD is used to select the image(s) you want and what options to print them with. Usually it's as simple as select the photo and press the camera's OK button. (Shown here are the PictBridge menu screens on a