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Following an advert in the Daily Express I decided I was going to buy a Canon S520 Bubble Jet Printer. I chose to go to Staples Corner, London where I had both PC World and Staples to browse around. The printer cost me £149.98 from Staples although I am aware that it can be purchased from ... Read review
Advantages: Beautiful colours, easy to install, no paper jams (touch wood), cheap ink cartridges Disadvantages: Noisy, Noisy, Noisy!!
...was going to buy a Canon S520 Bubble Jet Printer. I chose to go to Staples Corner, London where I had both PC World and Staples to browse around. The printer cost me £149.98 from Staples although I am aware that it can be purchased from buy.com for $141.95.
It measures 17 inches in width by 18 inches in depth from the back of the unit to the end of the paper catcher. Colouring is grey / blue and quite modern looking.
... ...accompanies the printer and the Canon website www.canon.co.uk, this printer is compatible with all the major computing platforms including Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, 2000 and XP. I personally have installed it on a computer running ME and had no problems following the installation instruction apart from when it came to the cabling….
One reason I went with this printer is because I had been told that it could be ... more
DOS installation! Oh Dear!
That’s the comment that greeted me when I paid £50 for John Lewis to set up my new PC 18 months ago. I’d had a computer since about 1992 and my faithful NEC Superscript had served me well during that time. I could tell it’s age though as the installation details are on floppy not CD! Anyway the printer was installed and all was well, until I started getting techno itchy feet – No I didn’t want to go raving I wanted some new gadgets!
Anyone who has posted a printer op on the site over the last few months may well have had comments from me, as I have been shopping around big time. After all that effort though I did make the final purchase on impulse.
Following an advert in the Daily Express I decided I was going to buy a Canon S520 Bubble Jet Printer. I chose to go to Staples Corner, London where I had both PC World and Staples to browse around. The printer cost me £149.98 from Staples although I am aware that it can be purchased from buy.com for $141.95.
It measures 17 inches in width by 18 inches in depth from the back of the unit to the end of the paper catcher. Colouring is grey / blue and quite modern looking.
What platform does it run on?
According to the booklet that accompanies the printer and the Canon website www.canon.co.uk, this printer is compatible with all the major computing platforms including Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, 2000 and XP. I personally have installed it on a computer running ME and had no problems following the installation instruction apart from when it came to the cabling…. One reason I went with this printer is because I had been told that it could be connected with USB or Parallel leads. As my old printer used the traditional parallel method I thought this would be a bonus as I could use existing cables plus I knew that the printer port on my base unit worked. Anything to avoid extra cost.
This was not the case…
After an hour of installing and reinstalling the printer driver from the CD provided I realised that I was getting nowhere fast, I was also becoming impatient to get my new toy working.
I decided to revisit some of the opinions on Ciao and Dooyoo relating to printer purchasing and decided that although the leaflet said I could use either the parallel or USB method to install my printer, perhaps I should quit now and pop down to my local Curry’s to buy one of these USB things!
This I did at an extra cost of £13.99.
Being the airhead that I can be, I had to double check with the assistant that I was purchasing the right thing and for the first time in my life, the advice given was more than helpful and he even showed me where I should plug it in (so to speak!!!)
Once I returned home with this cable installation was complete in less than five minutes.
The quick installation guide provided was well explained and the pictures were accurate.
Canon describe this printer as having their high speed technology which will produce up to 14 pages per minute in black and white or 9 pages per minute in colour. This has not been my experience; printing three copies of my colour profile from Ciao took 72seconds, two pages of black and white 20 seconds - Well over the stated time!
I am quite a novice when it comes to computer hardware so I am afraid I cannot comment on the Vivid Photo and Photo Optimiser technologies that this printer has.
What I can say is that I was pretty impressed with the example photographic print that the sales representative from Canon showed me whilst I was browsing in PC World. The picture did not have a border and covered the whole A4 page and in my view looked very much like a photo taken from a negative.
Canon describes their S520 as the ‘High Speed, High Quality office printer for the home’. I am not overly impressed with the speed but can’t fault the quality and as I intend using the printer mainly for home use with a few work projects from time to time this is satisfactory for me.
One thing I love about this printer is that there is no mess involved in changing over the individual ink tanks. They are so easy to install and remove that I couldn’t believe my luck! What is also great is the fact that you push them all in, and that’s it – no switching or moving if you wish to change colours.
Provided with the printer is one unit of each of the following:
Black Ink Tank Cyan Ink Tank Yellow Ink Tank Magenta Ink Tank
The black ink tank is larger than the coloured ones, as we all know that black is probably the colour that we print in most often. The cartridges can be obtained from the www.canon.co.uk website for £10.56 for black or £8.21 for colours. Not too different in price from PC World really. I suppose it depends on your channel preference – Get them posted? Get them delivered?
Canon advice that if you cover 5% of a printed A4 page using a coloured tank every time, 340 pages can be made before the tank runs out. Now I’m a dedicated Ciaoer but I am not going to sit and test that fact! Thought it might help some of the more technologically advanced though ;o)
One thing I can confirm is that since the 9th March 2002 when I purchased this printer I have not had a paper jam and have been loading about 70 sheets of A4 at a time. Topping up the paper is easy, just slide it between the paper guides and away you go!
On the downside: Would you believe that this modern printer is much noisier than the faithful NEC Superscript? It can be quite annoying with its clonk clonk whirring noises. I use my PC in the late evenings when my parents are asleep and didn’t have any problems before with printing, now it can stir them from their sleep.
Altogether I am pleased with my purchase and would recommend it, but I feel that Canon could improve the product further by reducing the noise emissions.
Advantages: very high quality output with exceptionally sharp text, MicroFine Droplet Technology, quiet, excellent bundled software, XP compatibility, good value for money for what it does Disadvantages: Not exactly what I walked into the shop to buy!
...recommend a Canon. Probably this Canon S520 which is definitely the best printer model we have in the shop in my opinion" [pointing at the price - £179.99!!!]
PENNILESS STUDENT: "But I'm on a tight budg"...
ATTRACTIVE COMET EMPLOYEE: (Interrupting) "You'll be able to save a lot of money on cartridges once you've purchased it since Canon are the only company to offer separate ink tanks for each colour as standard with all their printers meaning ... ...sorts within their range. With Canon each cartridge costs around £10 each. I'm sure that within a couple of months you will have paid as much as you will now on the printer on cartridges if you chose a HP because HP cartridges are very expensive."
PENNILESS STUDENT: "but"...
ATTRACTIVE COMET EMPLOYEE: "The cartridges are not only cheaper since you only need to buy the colour you've run out of but also because the actual nozzle used to transfer ...
ken274 19.05.2002 (20.05.2002)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Canon S 520
Advantages: good speed Disadvantages: paper tray system
The S520 is a really high performance colour printer that runs at really fast speed. This is achieved by a bi-directional colour printing process. This means that the printing is done in both directions when the print head is moving. It prints at 14ppm for monochrome and 9ppm for colour. You can print on to all types of media but it really comes into its own when using good quality colour paper.
The S520 allows true borderless printing, making it ... ...the paper that are indistinguishable from traditional photographic prints.
I found the machine well packaged with excellent information regarding linking it to your computer.The driver was very easy to install and I was up and running in minutes.
The printer is quite stylish and does not look out of place with the latest computer styles.
My only critism is that the paper feed is from above rather than in a tray from below and you can only load ...
lesparker 04.10.2002
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Canon S 520
Advantages: Relatively cheap cartridges and I found them easy to re-fill Disadvantages: doesn't hold enough paper
Having had this printer for around 6 months now I have found it to be reliable and fairly fast.
Cartridges are easily obtainable or you can re-fill them with excellent results.
Print quality is good for both text and photo printing, it prints the pics from my digital camera well.Works very well with windows XP, usb connection made it very easy to set up with no problems since installation.
Very economical on ink,easy to replace cartridges too, ... ...to use they can even change a cartridge when needed. I use the printer daily for all sorts of projects without a problem. It beats those printers that have chipped cartridges, I've got one of those and it's more trouble than it's worth. and the s520 is cheaper and better than the photo printer I have. ...
bobd 31.07.2003
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Canon S 520
Advantages: Seperated colour ink tanks Disadvantages: Large Size
This printer is good, I use this printer to print my photos on photo papers. The quality of the colour is fairly good. One good thing about this printer is that the colour inks are seperated eg, a seperate tank for blue, yellor and red by having seperated ink tanks, if next time it ran out of blue colour ink colour, all we need to do is just replace blue colour ink, rather than replace all (in some printers, three different colour inks are combined ... ...cheap, i think this is one of the advantages for most of the canan printers. Although this printer is an old model, but i still recommend people to buy, because i have been using this printer since one and a half year ago, until now it never breakdown (which is good) and the colour quality is still good. =) ...
alcap0ne 01.06.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful Review of Canon S 520
Picture quality
Printing speed
Colour sensitivity
Ease of use
Value For Money
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