Well, I like it anyway! (Canon BJC 2000)

Member Name: paule23

Product:	Canon BJC 2000
Date:	04/10/00 (78 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good print quality, separate ink tanks

Disadvantages: Slow

Whether you like a printer or not really depends on what you use it for and how much it costs to run.

I own a Canon BJC-2000. It came in a package with the computer I purchased, although I have seen them in the shops for around £55. The first feature I noticed, which I thought was quite novel, was that the ink cartridge has two separte tanks, one for black ink and one for colour printing. I had not seen this before and think it is a very good feature, especially for a printer in this price range. The main advantage is that you don't have to keep swapping between black ink and colour ink cartridges, which although not messy is a bit of a pest to do! The replacement ink tanks are quite cheap too. Although the "official" canon versions are around £8 for the black tank and £17 for the colour one, I have found you can buy own brand cartridges (WHSmith, PC World etc.) for around £5 for the black tank and only £8 for the colour tank, quite a significant saving, and WHSmith always seem to have a 3 for 2 offer on ink cartidges, so you can save even more money!

Obviously as the cartridge has two ink tanks, each tank is smaller and holds less ink. Canon reckon you can get on average 225 printed sheets from a black tank, and about 100 sheets from a colour tank, which works out at about 2p an 8p a sheet respectively if you purchase own brand tanks, which is a very respectable price per sheet and compares very favourably with other manufacturers (I believe it is quite cheap in fact). There are all sorts of other cartidges available i.e. for photo printing, but as I have not used these I cannot comment on how effective they are, but it is good to know there is a range available if I need them.

The printing speed is average, at up to 4.5 pages a minute for black ink and 2 pages per minute for colour ink. OK this is not exactly lightning quick, but at the price you are paying for this printer what do you expect.

Canon adver
tise that the printer uses "drop modulation technology"!. I've no idea what this means but it is supposed to mean a better print quality. I'm not sure if it makes any difference above their normal print quality, but I have always found the quality to be very good, certainly more than adequate for my needs (word processing and printing the occassional web page).

Another nifty feature is that you can buy a scanning cartridge. You put this where you would normally place your ink cartridge, and it turns your printer into a scanner. The resolution is only 360x360 dpi, but if you only scan documents occassionally, or have limited room and cannot fit a flat-bed scanner in, then this is a great option, and adds an extra bit of versatility to this printer.

Overall, for the price this is an exceptional printer. The quality is good, cartridges are quite cheap and easy to get hold of, and it has some interesting extra options (i.e. the scanning cartridge). OK, it is not exactly lightning fast, but at around £55 what do you expect?

05.10.00 I've just remembered, one bad point about this printer is the lack of a USB port, therefore no good for iMac's. The good news is there is a new version out, the BJC-2100, it's a little more expensive at about £70.00, but is probably still a good buy!

Summary: