Portable but redundant (Canon BJC 85)

Member Name: Plymyphil

Product:	Canon BJC 85
Date:	21/01/04 (1706 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lightweight, Portable

Disadvantages: Redundant

Technology marches forwards and for many members of society with an above cretinous IQ sometimes the purpose of technology is slightly lost.
Years ago now, we took delivery of some laptop computers. The powers that be had decided that as laptops were portable, they must be packaged in huge, hernia inducing, laptop cases and include a 'portable' printer.

Enter, stage left, the Canon BJC85. Grown up brother of a mono printer that preceeded it the purpose of this printer is slightly lost on me. Please, decide what you need to print before you leave home, the office or wherever. Print it there in good quality and then take it with you. A ream of paper is a similar weight to this baby so if you're not quite sure which page you require or how many, print loads.

I was sat in a car the other day making a relatively short journey through the west country and thanks to the wondrous technology of Satnav we had spoken commentary throughout the journey. Now, if thousands of appointments were being made then maybe this would have a purpose but in this case, this was one of only a few such journeys and five minutes map searching on the Internet gave me the passenger all the route information I needed.

This printer is for me in the same category.

Soon after purchase, all users of the laptops removed them from the case and left them on shelves to gather dust. You see, they are in essence and emergency backup device for people who just have to print whilst out and about. Hence, engage half a dozen brain cells and plan ahead and there is no need for this product.

When purchased they added about £120.00 to the price of the laptop bundle but I guess now, ecomoics of supply and demand will have brought the price down - Canon are good at supplying and I can't believe there is much of a demand for them.

Let me just hop off my soap box for a moment and share a little technical detail with those still thinking that thi
s sounds like the product they've always needed and really don't know how they've ever lived without.

The printer is tiny - about a twelve inch ruler long by half a twelve inch ruler wide.

It prints at an interminably slow speed - Canon claim 5 pages per minute mono and 2 pages per minute colour. I say that this is downhill with the wind behind it only. In normal use, half these times and you have something approaching the truth.

Maximum resolution is relatively low too at 720 dot per inch (dpi) and no resolution enhancing technology that we have come to expect. This means that for text and business graphics it is acceptable. For images, even clipart the result is disappointing.

As with most inkjet printers this will print onto a wide range of transparancies and the software that installs effortlessly is perfectly acceptable for selecting different media and quality of print.

We have this printer installed on machines running Windows 98 but the disk that comes with the software claims drivers for Windows 95, 98, NT4.0 and Apple OS 8.1 or later.

The printer will also install onto handheld device including Palm OS and Windows CE.

OVERALL
I recommend that you think before you leave and print before you go. The quality of the ouput is poor and the extra weight of printer and adaptor you carry seems excessive for the benefit of printing away from base. If you have a job that really does need printing on the go then maybe this is your solution. For me, I can't think of a more redundant piece of technology - except perhaps Satnav for local journeys.

Thanks for taking the time to read and rate this opinion and I look forward to reading any comments you may leave - Phil

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