Chug Chug Whirr Chug Chug Whirrr Hummmm (Canon S 520)

Member Name: whitby

Product:	Canon S 520
Date:	13/04/02 (1382 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lovely bright colour, Cheap replacement cartridges, Easy set up and no paper jams

Disadvantages: Noisy, Noisy, Noisy

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 this site over the last few months may well have had comments from me, as I have been shopping around big time.

Then after all that effort I decided 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 travel 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 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 Currys 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 Dooyoo 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 th
e 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?

One thing I will point out is that everytime I've checked the Canon website the ink cartridges I need are 'out of stock' which isn't very impressive from the producer.

Canon advise 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 opinion writer but I am not going to sit and test that fact! Thought it might help some of the more technologically advanced though ;o)

What I have done is print up 200 colour flyers for a work's social event that I'm organising and the ink cartridges are probably a quarter of the way down - so not bad in my view.

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! If paper runs out mid cycl
e then just top up as above, and press the resume key to continue - simple!

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.

It's great to be away from black and white anyway!

Summary: