Canon PIXMA MP530, GBC ProClick
Posted Monday March 19, 2007 in Reviews
The Internet is a good place to air your bile towards a product that has disappointed you, but perhaps it’s underused as a platform to talk about the things you like, the things that help you get work done every day. Since starting my company late last year, I’ve done my research and been lucky enough to buy some equipment and tools that have really helped me be pr. Since I’m in a good mood these days, I’m going to review them all here, starting with the Canon PIXMA MP530 multifunction printer and the GBC ProClick binding system.
As a small start-up, we need to do a lot of sales but don’t have a big budget. Since we want to speak personally to the needs of every potential customer, expensive runs of brochures don’t do what we need; better is to easily produce custom materials for everyone. The PIXMA MP530 helps me print out gorgeous full-color documents, and the GBC ProClick system helps me bind them into attractive brochures.
The PIXMA MP530 is a large but full-featured multifunction. It’s makes copies very quickly, has a reliable feeder for faxes and copying, prints high-quality color pages quickly, and even (more slowly) prints gorgeous photos with no visible banding, moiré, or other defects. The bundled software is great for scanning, and can even easily make single PDF documents from multiple scans with just a couple of clicks. Best of all, it’s a very reliable system — I’ve been working with multifunctions and color inkjets from the late ’90s, and have put up with every form of trouble, but the MP530 installed quickly, worked immediately, and has never balked. The only downside is the lack of a network card, even optionally, but otherwise it’s an easy winner.
The GBC ProClick system is also an easy winner. Anybody who’s used conventional binding system knows that they’re annoying to use; you either use the comb binding system, which looks mediocre but is relatively easy, or the attractive coils that must slowly be threaded by hand. The ProClick spines sort of split the difference in look, and take just seconds to thread, then zip shut using a special tool. I also bought the very compact entry-level binding machine, which is about the size of a three-hole punch, so it fits easily in any office. It also punches holes pretty easily, although its six-sheet limit (really, I’ve found, about eight) can make it a bit slow to get through a big document. Still, at the price — a quarter to a fifth of a traditional binding machine — it’s a good buy and pretty effective.
That’s some of the equipment we’re starting with. I’m a happy consumer, and I hope that this stuff can help you as much as it helps me!
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