I am not going to say (as many do) "I bought this printer 2 hours ago and I love it". I bought it in November 2007 - it is now January 2009. Previously I had always rated Epson as the best, but I had got fed up of cleaning the heads, and cartridges saying they were empty when they weren't. I use the Canon PIXMA once a week or (often) less, so you might reasonably expect the heads to clog up. I have never had to clean the heads. I just load the paper and print. When a cartridge says it is empty, it is visibly completely empty (it is see-through). The print quality is nothing short of stunning. I cannot over-emphasise how delighted I am with this printer. Professional Presentation Quality every time. I have many prints on A3+ and they are breathtaking. Buy it and you will not be disappointed.

I agree totally with the previous review.
I used the printer for exactly the same things, the only thing I found was that it shows up a bad picture.
The lower the pixel the worse it looks when blown up to A3+.
Hence the reason I bought a 12.1 megapixel camera.
Since doing that everyone has commented how good these prints are and have actually had people asking for prints. Well recommend Canon PIXMA Pro9000.

My R1800 had just given up the ghost only 13 months into its life. I used a CISS and Epson totally refused to even look at the thing! So a long relationship with Epson came to an acrimonious end. I use a Canon IP4200 for day to day prints and letters and looked at the Pro9000. Too expensive new, but Canons own refund shop on eBay was a healthy £300 cheaper and with the same warranty period it was the perfect solution.
The printer arrived within 36 hours!
Set up was easy enough.. remember this is a pro grade printer so the software is pretty hefty and takes a whole to upload. The on-screen manual didn't take, so an uninstall/reinstall had to be done, but thats the only problem on that score.
I use Hahnemuhle paper which is quite heavy and proved problematical for the Epson... the Canon takes it straight from the feed tray... perfect!
The cartridges are 30% cheaper and printing just black and white, I got 60 prints before the black ran out... economical!
All in all, I'd recommend this printer most highly.

I'm a very keen amateur photographer and I've been using an Epson A3+ printer for 5 years. The prints were pretty good, but I got absolutely sick of continually having to clean the nozzles and wasting of ink. Also the Epson Status Monitoring software conflicted with a second, HP printer I had connected.I sent my best pictures away to a lab.So I bought the Canon 9000. The Canon has so far produced EXCEPTIONAL print quality, on everything from 4"x6" to A3+. It is a lot faster than the Epson and the prints are nothing short of Lab quality. Stunning. So far I've used enough ink to empty one cartridge and 2 more are imminent but I haven't cleaned the heads once. I would not even consider sending my pictures to a lab now. And at less than 7 per cartridge, you can afford to buy original inks. It's the difference between submitting a large print on expensive photo paper and hoping it comes out OK, and waiting excitedly knowing you will get a perfect print every time. I can print a letter on the Canon and an envelope on the HP Laserjet simultaneously - no driver or software conflict. It also prints on CDs, which was one of the reasons I selected it, but I haven't had reason to test that yet. Also it will take heavy duty fine art paper with a straight paper path, but again I haven't tried that. A nice touch is that you can leave it turned completely off, but if you send a print to it, it springs into life, makes the print and then turns itself off again. I read a review somewhere that it's not too hot printing on plain paper. Don't know where they got that from - it's perfect Well worth every penny of 390.