I have gotten this printer second-hand at the local NextDoor website. The person who sold it never had used it; it was in the original packaging box sitting inside a shipping box, with the name and the address of the original owner still on it. Perhaps, the printer was sent as a sample to an 'influencer' with the intent to get some kind of a review or a feedback. The printer was stored in a garage for about 5 years (this is the number that floats in my memory; perhaps it is based on the shipping dates as seen on the package).
It is a medium-high-end, dye-based, 8-ink printer and can print on up to 13x19'' (A3+) media. It has a permanent printhead and replaceable ink supplies. It also has many other features such as wireless and ethernet connection; it may even have a DVD drive, which I never used. The print media can be fed into the printer in three possible ways, with two trays in front and one in the back. The tray in the back allows to feed a very thick digital fine arts media stock.
As of today (February 2024), Canon Pixma Pro-100 is still manufactured and fully supported by Canon ($950 at Amazon). This is impressive as the original release date of the printer is September 2012. The set of 8 ink supplies (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow -Light cyan -Light magenta -Light gray -Medium Gray- Photo BlacK) can be bought for about $100. It also has a Photoshop Plug-in so the printer driver is fully integrated with Adobe Photoshop. The Plug-in is available for download from Canon website for free.
In my particular case, despite the prolonged storage time, the printer started smoothly, right out the box; all the nozzles were present. Because the ink set was dye-based, and the ink supplies were stored outside of the printhead, there were no storage related issues, typical for pigment based inks. I found the output of the printer excellent and am currently on the third set of the ink supplies. After 3 years of ownership, I printed about fifty 13x19 prints, both color and black-and white; I also printed on Canon Photo and Digital Fine Arts media, readily available through Amazon. Because the ink set contains 2 gray inks, the B/W output was excellent. As of today (February 2024), my printer is fully operational.
A good comparison to this product would be the HP Deskjet 8750 9-ink printer, which is also dye-based and supported up to 13''x19'' media size; I worked on it during my time at HP. The printer was released in 2005, 7 years prior to Pixma 100, and the output of that printer was very comparable to Canon. However, it was essentially an HP Deskjet printer on steroids; it had the same printer engine and the printheads as the rest of the Deskjet family. The main issue was the difficulty to feed the digital fine art media through it, as the thick media was easily stuck. Also the printheads and the amount of inks per printhead were too small for the large format printing. The user could get out of ink in the middle of a printing job. I do not recall the exact number but perhaps the printheads needed to be replaced after 10 13x19 pages printed.
As of today, HP Deskjet 8750 is discontinued. The printheads for it (HP94, HP100) are also no longer manufactured, so those people who still own this printer cannot use it. Here goes the mantra of HP taking care of its customers and having the customers at the center of its business.
It is also perhaps worth mentioning that HP Personal Photo Printing Division, which was once lead by VJ (Viomesh Joshi ) and produced Deskjet 8750 had been disbanded in about 2007. VJ himself however was not badly affected as he led the whole HP Personal Printing and Computer Division at some point. As of today, he is no longer with HP and currently leads 3D Systems Company in San Diego.
The HP Photo Printing Division was let go because HP could not sell enough of photo printers to be profitable. At that time, people started to print less, as the personal handheld devices came in. Perhaps there was a room for 1 or maybe 2 photo printing companies and Canon and Epson won this competition.
I want to mention that HP always have made a big deal of the photo permanence of their printing output. Thus, Deskjet 8750 was boasting producing 70 years+ lasting photos! Interestingly, the printer itself did not last that long and faded away after about 5 years of existence. So did the engineers and managers of all levels working on it. So did the printheads that went into this printer.
Where did our Deskjet 8750 printers go, the printers of which we were so proud and happy? Alas, they are all in the landfill, not bringing happiness to people and polluting the planet.
I hope some of the prints are still around, 19 years after; forget the 70+ years. The current attitudes have changed as well, as the hard copies are now considered disposable (generated as needed) , whereas the digital content is becoming more of a permanent asset. So - if very few Deskjet 8750 prints exist as of today, I will not be surprised.
On a positive note, I am under impression that the design of Pixma Pro-100 was affected by HP 8750 so our effort was not completely lost, and is kept alive by this Canon product. Having Gray inks in the ink set stabilizes neutral color axis and is overall beneficial for the color accuracy. Also, the printer success showed that dye based inks have room in photo imaging (more about it later).
