Canon's BJC-3000 Color Bubble Jet Printer is yet another fine product in the line of reliable Canon inkjets suitable for office or home use. With a built-in USB and parallel port,... more
A review by jimbuck on Canon BJC 3000 December 16th, 2000
Author's product rating:
Picture quality
Excellent
Printing speed
Fast
Colour sensitivity
Excellent
Ease of use
Very easy
Value For Money
Excellent
Advantages:
Easy to use
Disadvantages:
A bit noisy
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
The Canon BJC3000 is the ideal printer for domestic use because of its size, ease of use and most importantly has separate colour cartridges. Oh yes! The price comes into the equation as well.
In addition to the manual there is a large colour printed card that shows in detail how to install the cartridges. In fact apart from getting some details for this review I haven't even opened the manual yet. But curiosity got the better of me and I eventually had a look at it after using the printer without a problem for over three months. Clear and full of useful information is the only way to describe it.
Where you place the printer is a matter for the user but in general if you were to sit in the place that you intend to allocate for the printer and are comfortable, then so will the printer. Would you be comfortable sat next to a radiator each and every day or in bright sunlight through a window or in a draughty and damp room? If you wouldn’t then neither would the printer.
Weighing in at just under 4 kg it only requires some 15" wide x 18" deep of desk space and if height is a factor then 9" is the figure and will connect to the PC via the Parallel port or USB port. The accompanying CD does all the work in installing the appropriate printer driver, which takes just a few seconds.
The printer is so simple to connect and set up for immediate use that there is no need to even open the manual let alone read it. Connect it up, switch it and the PC on and once the PC has recognised the printer's presence load the CD and open it. The printer driver will be installed and you can print in full colour straight away.
The sheet feeder (A4 size) will take up to 100 sheets of paper and churn them out at the rate of 4 ppm in just black. It is just 2.8 ppm in colour. But you can get a faster print rate of 9 ppm for just mono printing by using the BC-30 ink cartridge. The print resolution is 1440 x 720 dpi. Time with me is not a factor, so printing speeds are of no relevance. A lever on the front will adjust the distance between the print head and paper so thin card of up to 105 g/m² can be printed on. The only other controls are the on/off switch and the resume button, the purpose of which is explained in the manual.
The print quality is very, very good and with the right sort of paper will print photographs as near as good as the real thing. The printed pages come out dry so there is no danger of smearing the print by handling them immediately.
It does tend to be a bit noisy when switching on as the carriage sorts itself out to eventually arrive in the right place.
A neat touch is its ability to go into stand-by by mode after a period of none use of 1, 10, 30 or 60 mins. I haven't tried this as my printing requirements do not warrant leaving it switched on all day.
An even neater touch is the separate cartridges for the four colours. So as my printer will be used mainly for black work I only need to buy a replacement black ink cartridge when it becomes empty and not a full set to replace the hardly used colours as well. I mean who wants to throw away a nearly full colour cartridge?
It isn't the cheapest printer on the market but at £89.99 it is good value. Now whether it lasts as long as my old Star LC200 9 pin dot matrix did remains to be seen as after ten years it is still going strong. I have my doubts but I should get at least five years out of it.
Advantages: 4 Color printing, fast enough, good installation Disadvantages: Seems to be a sibling of the 6100
...as the BJC-6100, but even Canon concede that the 6100 will produce detectably superior photo results.
Noise is an area in which the BJC-3000 scores well. Although it tends to wake up and run a head cleaning cycle unexpectedly every now and again, it is not too annoying to listen to in use. The printer is also relatively compact and easy on the eye.
Installation wasn't trouble free. In the installation documentation there is a warning that the Windows ... ...happened with us. An experienced Windows 98 user would be able to fix the problem very quickly and the warning document had clear advice how to fix the problem. However, the user shouldn't really be allowed to get into trouble in the first place.
Having already used a BJC-6100, it's difficult to judge the BJC-3000 generously. The 6100 is a very fine all-round printer. The BJC-3000 simply looks like a cut-down economy model. That said, for users ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: Very Easy To Use, Small, quick enough for my home use Disadvantages: Little Noisy,
...My friend has the Canon BJC-2100, and he also says that it prints well. In my Opinion the BJC-3000 is the upgrade from the BJC-2100 because they have the same shape and size.
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The Noise:
Well what can i say, its quite noisy but for a middle of the range printer you cant have a really quite printer, baring in mind this printer is now 3 years old, so it is not half bad.
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... ...this printer is still a good printer in my opinion. I will not be swapping this until it breaks or the cartridges stop becoming made.
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To Sum off This Review:
If you can buy this printer now if its still available go for it, you will definitely be happy. I do not see the point in spending lots of money on a printer when a cheaper one will do the same sort of job. For home use this is a good ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: Separate colour cartridges mean less waste of ink Disadvantages: Extremely noisy!
I bought this Canon printer nearly four years ago. I liked that it was simple to use (only two buttons on the front - one to turn it on and off, the other for everything else!).
I also liked that you could change the colour cartridges individually, rather than chucking away a whole load of yellow and magenta ink, simply because the cyan had run out (hands up those of you who are impressed because I didn't say red and blue. None? OK, I'll try harder ... ...said, I would buy a Canon again and I have recommended this 'separate inks' colour printer to friends and family and they're all very happy with it. They can't believe they used to throw away so much colour ink before! The Canon S630 is a very similar style but much quieter and trendier - silver and dark grey instead of beige. ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: Reasonably fast and great print quality. Disadvantages: Cost of ink refills.
...A small windfall has enabled one of my 6 granddaughters to join the 21st century and get a computer but the funds wouldn’t run to a computer AND a printer, even a cheap one. Well they would have but it would have meant a 15” monitor instead of a 17” screen and no CD writer. So I decided that the way out of the dilemma was to giver her my CanonBJC3000 and buy myself a new one.
Having had excellent service from the BJC3000 for over 12 months I naturally leaned heavily in Canon’s direction primarily because Canon printers have separate ink tanks and after consulting all the usual sources I decided that the Canon S520 would be the machine for me. Unfortunately none were available locally and I wanted it today so that I could pass on my old printer. The salesman at PC World told me that the only difference...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: Great price, good quality, fast, good looking Disadvantages: No compatible cartridges
...one with a high spec, as it just won’t perform. Having said that, there are a lot of fairly good quality printers available for less than £100 (I should know, remember all that research I mentioned!). I had a budget of £90, but that had to include the cost of the cable as well.
Another thing to check is what sort of connection you need to your computer. There is no point going out and buying a Parallel printer that is cheap if you’ve only got a USB computer. I’ve got an iMac, which is USB only, so surprise surprise I needed a USB printer. Most printers nowadays are either USB or dual USB/Parallel printers, so this did not restrict my choice too much.
After much browsing around I narrowed my choice down to 6. They were the CanonBJC-3000, Canon B-400, the Hewlett Packard 840c, Epson 580, Epson 680 and Lexmark...
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Advantages: Cheap price and prints nicely,affordable ink catridges Disadvantages: error on waste tank full, prints discolored sometimes
...lights) and occurs when a counter in the nozzle reaches its factory limit. Its the only error i've had in its lifetime. To my horror, i found out in the internet that i'm not the only person which has the same problem, other people who purchased the same printer also had this problem arount 2 years of its use. No BJ catridge replacement could also fix this problem sadly it CANNOT be reset even if you know the reset codes. Their customer support insist that it is a catridges problem, so they've spent good money without any use.
What does this opinion got to do with s200? Well, the same thing will happen as i later found out in the internet.
Mistakes are not meant to be repeated, sooner or later my history shall repeat (i still have those bjc--3000 and s200)
i'll be fair with canon as this is the only problem i've encountered, sadly it...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Canon's BJC-3000 Color Bubble Jet Printer is yet another fine product in the line of reliable Canon inkjets suitable for office or home use. With a built-in USB and parallel port, it is easy to connect to your Macintosh or PC, and you'll be up and running and receiving quality prints in no time. The BJC-3000 even offers unique and convenient features like an optical low-ink sensor to let you know when you're running low on ink. And Canon's Think Tank System puts each color of ink in individual tanks, letting you replace each color separately, and reducing both waste and cost. In addition, the inks are moisture and light resistant, ensuring that your images will remain vivid and clear.
In my mind, Canon SLR's are the definition of SLR Camera's. I absolutely love this camera. I do not pretend to be a professional photographer, but do have a GCSE in photography and know a good photo when I see one. The quality of the pictures this... more
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