Canon PIXMA MX490 Driver

Canon PIXMA MX490 Driver is the software package for the MX490 series of all-in-one inkjets, which covers the MX492, MX494, MX495 and MX497 as well. It installs three things at once. A printer driver, the ScanGear scanner driver, and a fax driver that lets the machine send faxes straight from a document on screen. Without it the printer still prints through the system’s generic driver, but the scanner, the fax and every maintenance tool stay out of reach.

That is the practical reason to install this package rather than settle for whatever appears when the printer is plugged in. Print quality settings, duplex control, borderless photos and the IJ Scan Utility all live here. The same goes for the older MX472, which uses a separate package that will not work on this series despite the near-identical cabinet.

What the printer driver adds over the generic one

The generic driver prints. Canon PIXMA MX490 Driver prints with the settings the hardware was built for. The print dialog gains paper type profiles for Canon photo papers, the full quality scale up to 4800 by 1200 dpi, borderless printing on photo sizes and the automatic two-sided printing the MX490 series supports.

The Maintenance tab is the part people miss. Nozzle check, print head alignment and both cleaning routines are run from here, along with the roller cleaning routine and a quiet mode with a timer. Ink levels for the PG-245 black and CL-246 colour cartridges are shown. If a print comes out streaked, this tab is where the fix lives, not the printer’s own small screen.

Scanning with ScanGear and the IJ Scan Utility

ScanGear, installed by Canon PIXMA MX490 Driver, is the driver any scanning program talks to. On its own it gives you a preview, resolution up to the 1200 dpi optical limit, colour or grayscale, and a crop. The IJ Scan Utility installed alongside is what most people actually use. Its Auto button detects whether the glass holds a photo or a document and picks settings itself. Document mode scans to a searchable PDF, stacks multiple pages into one file and can send the result to an email client.

The 20-sheet automatic document feeder shows up here as a source option. Load a stack, choose Document, and the utility pulls every page into a single PDF without further clicks. Two catches. Scanning over wireless requires the utility to have the printer selected in its Settings dialog first, or it will report that no scanner is found. And the utility does not appear in the menu until this package is installed, which is why a printer that already prints can seem to have no scanner at all.

For a scanning front end with more control over file naming and OCR languages, a scanner application that batches pages into PDFs drives the same ScanGear driver and can replace the utility entirely.

Wireless setup and the offline problem

Canon PIXMA MX490 Driver includes the network setup routine, with three methods. Cableless, where the printer broadcasts its own temporary network. A WPS button press. Or USB-assisted, which is the most reliable when a router hides its network name. The printer supports 802.11b/g/n on 2.4 GHz only, so a 5 GHz-only network will never see it.

The failure that fills the support forums is the printer going offline after a router change or a new lease. The printer got a new address and the driver is still talking to the old one. The IJ Network Device Setup Utility bundled here rediscovers the printer and updates the port. Setting a fixed address for the printer in the router prevents the whole episode.

The fax driver

The MX490 series has a 33.6 kbps modem, and the fax driver turns it into a printer you can choose from any program. Pick it in the print dialog, type or select a number from its address book, and the document goes out without being printed first.

Received faxes still arrive on paper or in the printer’s memory, not on the computer. For the offices still faxing forms to a clinic or a court, it saves a page and a walk.

Conclusion

Canon PIXMA MX490 Driver is for anyone who owns one of these all-in-ones and wants the scanner, the feeder and the maintenance tools rather than a printer that merely prints. Home offices that scan receipts and the occasional fax user get everything the hardware can do from one installer.

If the machine only ever prints single-sided documents from a wired connection, the generic driver is enough and this package adds little. The moment you lift the scanner lid, install it.