Canon Laser Multifunction Printer (imageCLASS D480)

This device is basically identical to the MF4370dn which is heavily (and positively) reviewed. As near as I can tell there are three differences between the two units: 1) The D480 is beige, the MF4370 black 2) The D480 has am improved document feeder 3) The D480 has more complete duplexing than the MF4370. I was actually alerted to #3 by an Amazon review. You can put a stack of two-sided documents into the feeder and produce a set of... two-sided duplicates. According to the Amazon reviewer the MF4370 will take two-sided docs in the feeder but can only produce single-sided docs in response. I haven't tried this with a thick stack of documents but onesie/twosie stuff seems to work great, at least with plain copy paper. I tried duplex-copying a mortgage statement printed on thick paper and the feeder choked on it. Copying is fast, quiet and sharp. I'm delighted by it, actually. Duplexing is really simple. Manually scanning two different sheets onto one two-sided document or just copying a two-sided document are both very easy. The biggest limitation is the size of the platen. I didn't think I'd even notice this but if you're used to throwing down a book or something of a full-size copy machine you'll feel a bit cramped. If you want to scan oversized stuff you're of out of luck, but that's true of every machine in this price range. The D480 seems to be a perfectly capable printer and supports full duplexing right from software. I do most of my printing to an HP 3600dn and don't see that changing except for printing music, where duplexing will be really nice to have. Network printing was really easy to set up. Scanning is where this device falls a bit flat, and that's due almost entirely to the software, not the hardware. Even thought it has a Vista logo on the box it still relies on TWAIN drivers so it doesn't integrate with "Scanners and Cameras" under Vista. The software they ship to scan with is hokey but seems to work. I guess I can hope that Canon will ship updated drivers but I won't hold my breath. I am a little peeved at MSFT for letting Canon put a Vista logo on the box. Network scanning is a joke on this device (same as with MF4370). The process for doing this is just stupid, and the file transfer is ungodly slow. I was hoping to just pop some docs into the ADF and press a button and have them show up but you can't really do it in the backgrond and the file transfer times are godawful slow. This is partly due to the size of the data but not completely - it's REALLY REALLY SLOW. To give you an idea it took something like a minute or two to transfer an 88KB image. That's KILOBYTES. I think the scanner must send a raw dump over the network which is processed on the host machine. In any case, it's tricky to set up and basically unusable. Note to Canon: "Scan to USB Flash Drive" would be a far better feature. On the bright side there is support for scanning several pages from the ADF into a single (or multiple) PDFs. There is some sort of OCR software but I haven't tried to use it yet. We hope to scan bills and whatnot and toss the originals - I guess I'll see how well that works out. I haven't tried the faxing capability. Having a halfway decent ADF will be a godsend for sending contracts or NDAs around, but I'll probably rely more on scanning to PDF than actually faxing. I never receive faxes - I use online services like eFax. Finally I have to ding the awful documentation. It's really quite bad - I had to call tech support to try to figure out network scanning and found out that even though I didn't want to use USB scanning I still had to do a USB install. Oops. If you want to do anything non-trivial you're going to be experimenting and cursing a bit. Canon's tech support was actually quite good, but better docs would have saved them the cost of the call. So, as the title says, the hardware is quite good for $250 but the software side is a little lacking. Even though I poo-poo the device a lot I am pretty pleased with it. Based on what I've seen so far I can recommend it for SOHO use if network scanning or tight Vista integration is not going to be a high-priority item for you. I wouldn't recommend using it as a primary departmental printer because the input tray is dinky, but I don't think you'll find a better device under $500. more

My scanner & laser printer wouldn't work with my new Windows Vista 64-bit operating system. I loved my laser printer because the toner seemed to last a very long time compared to my photo printer. So I looked for a laser multifunction. Canon is rated best in most printer reviews. But I also wanted one that was networkable so that I could print from my laptop without having to turn on my desktop computer. Well, I've had the D480 over 2 months... and I really like it. It's like having an office copier, laser printer and scanner next to my desk. (I have not used the fax function so can't report on it.) For all it does, it does not have a large footprint and space is limited for me. It comes alive and copies or prints very quickly. Everything I have printed and scanned has been very clean and professional document quality. The duplex copy, print & scan is a real plus, and I have a bunch of files that I want to scan into electronic format. Paper handling has been perfect. I am very happy with its perforance. Only problems I had was with documentation. 1)Network Configuration was unclear and incomplete. After repeated efforts, I called Canon support. They were excellent, spoke English, were not in a rush to get me off the line, and knew exactly how to walk be through the network installation. That support is worth a lot these days. By the way, the rest of the documentation was good. 2) Scanning Software is minimalist when scanning on a network configuration and the documentation was unclear. It works but is bare bones. (The unit can be hooked up directly to a PC with a USB cable and the software for that kind of configuration seemed more robust and user friendly.) Maybe I'll purchase a separate software package for scanning. Bottom Line: I am very happy with this purchase in spite of the documentation and software, especially since I got it for $285 through a Amazon reseller versus the $400 list. more

I have owned this printer for about a week. I bought a Brother MFC7840W which for various reasons I returned, and I will explain all of that below. First, the things I like about this printer. - It is quiet. The Brother had a very loud fan which ran just about all the time. I do not even think the Canon has a fan. It has a hibernate mode which pulls 3 watts of electricity, which is quite good. By default it goes into sleep mode in 5... minutes. - The Brother dimmed the lights when it worked, the Canon does not. - The display is easy to read at any hight, the Brother required you to be about 5-4 to read it and I am 6-2. I had to squat. - The pages come out only slightly distorted, better than the Brother, but not as good as the 10 year old HP I am getting rid of. Then again, the $5000 HP printer we have at work distorts the paper about the same. - Paper feeding and duplex mode work fine and that is a nice feature. - Less flimsy than the Brother but I have to admit I paid almost twice as much. - Controls are reasonably easy to use, scan and fax are not difficult. Things I do not like: - Software is rough and not especially pleasant to use, the Brother was better in that regard. No way to control the machine from the computer (other than scanning) unless you do so through the network. I do have a home network but I have the machine connected with USB, so the web-based control program cannot be used. - There is an issue with paper alignment that some have mentioned, the Brother did not have this problem. Sure enough, it is not exactly parallel with the edge but this can be fine tuned by shifting the paper in the tray and worst case, a strip or two of tape in the right place would shift the paper supply and fix that problem. - Even though it is not too flimsy, the paper tray is, and it is bothersome. - Some paper distortion - I have been able to use the fax in bound and out, but I am unable to set it up and have it co-exist with my answering machine which is what I wouuld really like. According to the directions, this can be done, but you have to hang the answer machine off the printer which is not especially convenient. Overall I would say a machine like this is doing a lot, and there are a lot of potential down sides. Compromises have to be made. All things considered I like this unit a lot and even considering the extra cost I am glad I bought it. more

If you do significant network scanning this is not the model for you. If not, this unit is great. The D480 brings office quality copying to the home environment. Solidly built with good copy features, it works fast performs well. Works in Windows 7 and prints fast in network mode. Network scanning is a weakness because the Canon software does not install a scanner driver and does not fully do the job. Plus, the manual is perplexing. You... need additional software (but one such product, XnView, fortunately, is free). Open XnView, insert document and press "scan" on the D480, then "acquire" rather than "acquire from scanner" in Xn View. Use this order because network scan mode only gives about 30 seconds to make the connection to the PC. If you scan a lot to PDF you might prefer a model which uses a scanner driver. For occasional scanning, you will like the additional features in this method. I don't find scanning slow compared to other network models. Why Canon does not bundle software is a mystery, though. Overall I give the product high marks but I paid below the $350 retail price and at that price other models have to be considered. more

Canon released its new network scan driver and application for D480 few days ago. It says support network scan on D480 with Windows 7 64-bit. The scanner driver is TWAIN32 driver, so only 32 bit third party application can use this driver through TWAIN api. Anyway, Canon Network Scan Utility ScanGear works with TWAIN driver. You should be able to scan something through network with your Windows 7 64-bit OS now. It is a good news for me at... least. I bought a new computer in my home which has Windows 7 64bit OS. I download D480 Windows 7 64bit driver from Canon web site for my new computer. I can print over network on D480 with Windows 7 64bit computer, but the new 64bit driver readme file says it does not support Canon's network scan application. I asked Canon technical support about when 64bit Windows 7 network scan application will be ready, they told me they don't have plan for that yet. Windows 7 64 bit OS must use USB port to scan. But network scan still support on Windows 7 32bit OS. Thus, anyone who has Windows 7 64bit version OS and considering buy this device must very careful. You may loss a big convenience during scan operation. more