So is it an excellent quality printer for those tasks or is it meant more for faxing, copying, scanning documents, and printing simple graphics and stuff like that. I have also looked into the Epson Photo Feeder Scanner Attachement on my current Epson Perfection 1260 and getting the Canon iP4500. Would that be better or is there stuff in that price range $200 to $300? Also, if the Canon MP830 is suitable for my selected tasks, then are the cartridges sold at Meritline.com usable in it?

I would keep my expectations low for any scanner that auto-feeds photos. Although any scanner with a document feeder can, in theory, feed photos, the results of the scan may be worse than a platen scan.

The print engine in the IP4500 is THE SAME as the MP830. The tanks are chipped, and no chipped compatibles are yet available. You can still use compatible tanks or refill, but you have to stick a chip on them and disable the printer's ink level monitor.

As to the scanners, most people seem to feel that better results are obtained with a free-standing scanner than with an AIO machine.

For printing discs, virtually ANY capable printer is fine, it doesn't take an expensive printer to make good-looking discs. For printing photos, I'd go with The Canon IP4500, or the MP610 as the most bang for the buck. Again, they are identical in the printer section.

I believe, though I'm not certain, that the MP830 uses an older print head than the IP4500/MP610, so there may some advantage to not getting the MP830. The 830 may be the same as the IP4300. The IP4500 has more nozzles in the head, and slightly faster print times. Although the print resolutions are more or less the same.

Would it be almost as good as my flatbed Epson Perfection 1260 and if not, are you saying stay away from auto feeding photo trays like the Epson attachement or are you saying that just the all in one document feeders are of lesser quality?

For max image quality, only a platen scan should be used. No document feeder will give you as good of a scan, even if they call it a "photo feeder". In general, AIO scanners are considered inferior to free-standing scanners, so if you're happy with the current Epson, and you don't mind the clutter of multiple machines, keep it. If you want simplicity, and don't place high demands on a scanner, go with the AIO. But I'd shy away from any sort of a feeder for scanning photos unless you need high volume and don't need maximum quality.

Well the only reason I really wanted to have the auto feeder was because sometimes I may be scanning up to 250 pictures max and that would take really long if I hand scanned. Like if I had 100 photos, it usually would take me 2 min a photo, so I'd have to spend 3 hours and 20 minutes just scanning photos. Is there a good quality alternative to this?

Stick with hand scanning for photos. There in no good alternative to hand scanning, when it comes to photos. Auto feeders usually produce extremely poor quality scans of photos, largely because their scanning engines are optimized for text-only pages.

And yes, I did try scanning (copying) one photo with the MP830. Its scanning quality for photos doesn't come anywhere close to matching the quality of a scan from even a much cheaper AIO with a conventional flatbed scanner, let alone a dedicated flatbed scanner: The colors are very dull and muted, which is obvious even on the computer screen, and would turn out even worse when the scans are printed even on wallet-sized (3.5x2.5") paper.

So it sounds like you are recomending the Canon Pixma iP4500 since I already have a good scanner. What kind of media work best with it? Also, my HP Photosmart D5160 DVD tray scratches the discs if you push in the discs even a little bit too hard, does the Canon tray have that problem? Also, what type of DVD tray is used for the Canon iP4500? And lastly and most importantly, does the US Canon iP4500 have the slot to put the tray?

I would like to add one more negative to this point:

Those auto document feeders tend to cause permanent damage to photos being scanned because they can -- and do -- put new creases, marks and scratches on the photos. So don't use these auto-feed scanners for photos, especially if you want to keep the originals intact!