Not at the consumer level, but there are chip resetters out there. I understand that they cost in the neighborhood of $700 so you’d have to be using a LOT of cartridges to make one pay for itself. Even if you reset the cartridge, the newer Canon printers (I have an MP970) remember the serial numbers of the empty cartridges they’ve seen so simply resetting them isn’t enough unless you can change the serial number, too. Otherwise, the printer still knows it was once an empty cart and will handle it as a refill (void printer warranty and loss of ink monitoring). At the cost of printers today, I’m not worried about voiding the warranty, but I do like the ink monitoring system.
Cartridge World sells reset and refilled Canon cartridges. I haven’t used them yet but may since they have a store near where I work. I don’t think you save that much, though, over buying brand new Canon carts. As long as I never get one of my own cartridges back, my printer should never balk at the refilled and reset carts.
To the original question, I don’t have any problem with my MP970. It cost about $150 six months ago, scans well and has been modified to print on CDs ($20 for an eBay CD tray). This is a home printer that doesn’t get a huge amount of use so I can’t complain about ink costs (yet).
Ray
