Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have owned the last three generations of Canon's top-of-line Photo A.I.O. -- the 990, the 8120 and now the 8220. Each generation has offered at least one new feature that was important enough to me to justify an upgrade. And in terms of features, performance and price, each generation has been best-in-class vs. the competition. Measured only by those standards, they're absolutely 5 star printers. But I've also noticed an unwelcome feature in each new model: a steady increase in Canon's greed through wasteful ink usage. I mentioned this issue when I updated my review of the 990... it got even worse with the 8120, which I didn't review... and now it has reached near criminal levels with the MG8220. Seriously, there should be a law against this kind of consumer abuse and deception. I'm talking about ink usage that hits especially hard the home or home business user who only occasionally prints a color document or photo. The culprit is the programmed cleaning cycles, which were originally developed to keep the inkjet heads from clogging and have long been a part of inkjet operation. But Canon has exploited this operational necessity and turned it into a cash cow, a means of cleaning out customers' wallets. How bad has it gotten? In under three months, I have a full set of empty cartridges, without having printed a single photograph and with minimal printing of documents that had some spot color. So it has literally cost me DOLLARS PER PAGE to print some occasional color. At this rate, within a year, I'll spend more on ink than the cost of the printer, and that's with very light use. I've actually seen the five cartridges dedicated to color printing empty by a third during a period when I did no color printing at all. I've also had it go through cartridge cleaning cycles before it would SCAN a document which, of course, requires no ink at all. Ironically, this would not be a problem for users who print regularly in heavier volume, since the ink would be used for actual printing and not constant cleaning cycles. In the tests I've read of continuous printing until the cartridges are empty (which is how the ink usage tests are always done) Canon printers perform with reasonable economy and a competitive cost per page. However, the vast majority of the market and user base for this printer is composed of people who do light to moderate printing, and their experience will be much closer to mine. That brings me to my rating which, as I mentioned, would be 5 stars if features, performance and initial purchase price were the only considerations. But they're not, and the issue here is serious, one that will have a very significant financial impact on most users that they did not anticipate. Worse yet--and the reason I'm deducting 3 stars instead of 1 or 2--is that the issue is greed-based and intentional. Canon is ripping off its customers because it can, and because what it's doing will never show up in a review or test. I'm certainly aware that every printer manufacturer plays "the ink game" to some degree, but Canon has taken it to a whole new level with the MG8220. Thanks for taking the time to read my review, and I hope it has helped in your buying decision.