Canon BJC 85

...the software/driver for my desktop Canon at work conflicted with this one. Naturally I wanted to be able to use this at home (where my printing volume are low and my requirements more draft than presentation quality) and a more high volume one one my desk at work. But I couldn't! How stupid. Had to change my Canon printer at work for a different one (swapped with someone else in the office) then it was OK. You'd think Canon might have seen that one ...
...great printer if you need this kind of thing. If you want high volume then buy a laser; if you want to print lots of images in colour etc then buy a photosmart or something.

But I have a laptop and I occasionally had to travel for work so it was really useful to be able to print off, say, a presentation I was preparing without having to rely on a hotel's business suite or whatever.

At home I only needed to print off ... more

I've had this printer for about 4 years, which I think is a pretty impressive length of time. I don't use it every day, but it does get used regularly.

I bought it as I was attracted by its portability. You flip the lid down and it as as small as a medium sized hardback book, so it can go with you with your laptop. I paid about £150 for it, but I'm sure that it would only be a fraction of that now.

It prints either in colour or in black and white, and there are two ways of doing this:

1. The cheapest way to print is to use the black ink cartridge BCI 10 - these cost about £5 for a pack of three and each one last me weeks and weeks. hen if you want to print the odd thing in colour you insert a colour cartridge.Switching between the two requires you to take the B/W cartridge out and put in the colour one. This is not a huge faff - it only takes a few seconds, and the colour cartridge doesn't leak so you can store it (I just keep mine in my desk drawer).

2. If you wanted you could obviously use a mixed cartridge all the time, but the cost of the black ink is more if you use the smaller well which fits beside the colour ones. This is the BCI11 and it costs £8 for a three pack, and they are about half the size. The colour ones cost more still - up to £14 for a three pack.

So I find the best thing is to really regard it as a black and white occasional printer and just use it for the odd colour thing if you particularly need it.

At 720 dpi it is not particularly good at images anyway and prints very slowly in colour, so really that's not using it to its advantage.

"Advantages":

1. Using the B/W cartridges, the cost per sheet is very cheap, especially compared to say, some Epson or HP printers that cost like 50 quid to buy but then about 30 quid for every cartridge.

2. It is nice and small on the desk, so if you are working in limited space it is a good choice. The completed sheets come out the bottom, though, so you do need a clear space for the paper to appear into, or the print lines scrunch up.

3. It is perfectly good quality for documents.

4. Changing the cartridge is quick and easy.

5. It is portable, and has a USB connection so it is pretty quick and simple to use with any laptop, providing you have the drivers.

6. When you are not using it you can put the lid down (the paper feeder doubles as a lid for transporting), so you don't get dust in it.

"Disadvantages"

1. It prints each page quite slowly. About 20 seconds per page. Twice as slow if colour.

2. It doesn't hold that much paper in the tray (?twenty sheets), so if you are doing a lot of printing you might have to top it up.

3. The print quality is only really good for documents, not photos - although I have printed photos out on glossy paper and they've been OK, it's not what it is designed for.

4. Given it's a portable printer it was very annoying to discover that the software/driver for my desktop Canon at work conflicted with this one. Naturally I wanted to be able to use this at home (where my printing volume are low and my requirements more draft than presentation quality) and a more high volume one one my desk at work. But I couldn't! How stupid. Had to change my Canon printer at work for a different one (swapped with someone else in the office) then it was OK. You'd think Canon might have seen that one coming though.

In summary it is a great printer if you need this kind of thing. If you want high volume then buy a laser; if you want to print lots of images in colour etc then buy a photosmart or something.

But I have a laptop and I occasionally had to travel for work so it was really useful to be able to print off, say, a presentation I was preparing without having to rely on a hotel's business suite or whatever.

At home I only needed to print off the odd thing - a few pages a day, so the slowness wasn't a problem and the colour cartridge issues discussed above didn't bother me. It was nice to be able to print off in colour just now and again (say the front page of child's school assignment or something). I love the inexpensive printing costs for my personal use.

Apparently you can print wirelessly using either IR or bluetooth but I've never tried. It only takes a second to plug in the USB, that's why.

After four years with nothing breaking or needing attention I think its reliability is pretty impressive. 

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