Canon BJC-50 (Canon BJC 50)

Member Name:

Product:	Canon BJC 50
Date:	04/03/01 (289 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: very light and small, add on scanner

Disadvantages: bad helpdesk

I recently bought this printer because I wanted a printer that I can carry around together with laptop without having to carry an extra bag.

I had a good look at various portable printers and decided to choose this particular because of its light weight, infrared device (saves messing with the cables) and the add on option of a scanner.

I found the printing speed and quality to be satisfactory considering the small device.

I was disappointed that the paper feeder is an extra (last time I asked it was about £80) which I find to be a radiculous price. So for now I make do with having to press the printer icon, then waiting for a window to pop up to prompt me to insert a sheet of paper and after inserting you will need to press the OK button again. This is quite painful, especially because if you should insert the paper before you are prompted to do so, pure chaos will break out. I usually have to actually switch the printer off to continue.

The infrared connection also made me break out in sweat as it would sometimes print, sometimes it would not. I must have rung the helpdesk about twenty times and must say that they did not seem to be very qualified or helpful. They basically advised me to set the infrared speed to 9600 which is very, very slow (I am talking three minutes a page slow). When I claimed that this was simply unacceptable I was told that it must be a problem with my laptop.

In the end I found out for myself that this printer had still been shipped with the Windows 95 drivers and this was what cause me problems as I was running Windows 98. The download of the new, updated driver from their website was very simple and once installed, I could increase the speed to maximum and was happy.

Summary: