Customer Reviews

Canon BJC-85 Portable Color Bubble Jet Printer

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The Canon BJC-85 is a small, lightweight printer that is easy to pack and works wonderfully well. It has both parallel and USB connections for PC's or MAC's. The quality of the black text printing is very good - especially when you consider the small size and light weight of this printer. The color printing is also amazingly good. The software loads easily, and I had mine up and running in a matter of minutes attached to my laptop. You'll need to buy either a parallel or USB cable, since it isn't included. Canon has the best reputation, by far, of all the brands who make portable printers and this is their newest model. This is really a terrific little printer that is well worth the price for people on the road who need to print from their laptops.

This printer is a convenient size for someone with limited desk space or for taking it with you when traveling. The battery pak mentioned that can be used with this printer is available through DELL. It may take a bit of searching to find it. Click on Printers, then look for the Canon BJC-85, then click on more details under the printer icon, then related products on the next screen. It does not state for BJC-85 but it is the correct battery pack or ask Dell for reassurance, I did! I have been very pleased with the print quality of such a small printer, even the graphics are great. For Word Processing that requires mostly black ink, use the large BCI-10 Ink Cartridge it is better than the small black tank you use with color printing. I have not been able to locate the Infrared Driver for it does anyone know where that can be acquired? I am more than pleased with this quality and size of this printer.

I have had this printer for almost four years now, and while it has saved my bacon on the road a number of times, it has also really let me down at some crucial moments. First, like a lot of older Canon printers, it is noisy and slow. It takes forever to get started on a page. But also like a lot of canons, when it is working right the output is beautiful.
But you cannot count on finding ink cartridges for this printer on the road. It also has a weird and unpleasant ink cartridge system which includes two very different little trays, and three different kinds of tank.
But what made me finally leave the thing in a hotel room was its tendency to get halfway through a print job and jam or inexplicably give an error signal. I have spent hours trying to get a clean copy of a single transparency. Very frustrating.

I traveled to India on business, where just plugging something in was quite the adventure, so when I pulled this little gizmo out of my suitcase (where it took up almost no room), attached it to my laptop, and heard the whir of it going into action ... well, I almost wept. So far from home, with such a little piece of technical ingenuity. I have wanted to thank Canon for the past year, and so I'm doing it now. We actually use the BJC-85 as a secondary printer in my home business ... you know how it is, you don't want to walk all the way from the dining room to the office. It's sturdy, compatible with Mac and PC, and just too cute for words. For goodness sakes, it's not much bigger than a carton of eggs!

Another piece of junk disguised as a portable printer! (Read my review of the HP 350 portable.) On this unit, the paper feed mechanism failed after 3 months -- repaired under warranty. Last week it stopped putting ink down at my client's facility (really embarrassing). It spite of "5 deep cleanings," a new catridge, and 5 more deep cleanings the printer would only print blank pages.

I was then forced to go out a buy HP's new portable - the 450 (I'm keeping my fingers crossed) so I could continue working.

If you add DataVid's Documents To Go 4.0 (available from Amazon) to your Palm; and if you also add Docs To Print and IR Print (available from doctoprint.irprint.com); you can then -- work on -- and print MS Word files from your Palm to the Canon BJC-85 via IR (infrared) -- no cords or PC required.

The printing I get when using my Palm and Canon BJC-85 isn't letter quality. But the Canon BJC line of printers are the smallest, most portable letter-size printers available today. And being able to -- work on -- and print MS Word presentations and proposals from my Palm while on the road is extremely convenient.

(The above software combination, incidentally, will enable you to also print to other IR capable printers such as desktop models from HP and portable A6 paper-size units from Sipix.)

The BJC-85 also provides the option of swapping out the color cartridge -- and replacing it with a much larger black cartridge -- which is very helpful, especially since the ink capacity on this printer is quite limited.

(As a watch-out: be sure to aim your Palm at the Canon BJC-85's IR port from at least seven inches away, otherwise the connection won't be made. I learned this after e-mailing someone at Docs To Print, who was most helpful.)

Being able to print letter-size documents on the road directly from my Palm is another good reason to leave my heavy laptop computer -- at home -- where it belongs!

This is a good quality printer. I like it. There's only one thing I don't like. The ink tanks (cartridges) are small. It seems like I'm always putting in a new one. And of course, they have to have all three colors in one tank so that the remaining ink of the other two colors gets wasted. At least the tanks are cheap.

I just received my new Canon portable printer amd it does wonders. It is easily installed and prints fast and sharp. Although I never found the so called "battery" (do the research because its necessary), its portability is excellent. It fits snuggly in the outer pocket of my Targus laptop case so I can carry the whole equipment when on the road. The Canon is the best in its kind for the price. ....

I was looking for a printer I could travel with which had good print quality. This one is great, a little too heavy to tote around, but I put it in my suitcase instead!

I have been in business for over 30 yrs., and much of my work takes me outside the office. The addition of my new BJC-85 color printer completes my "out-of-office" experience. I was amazed when I saw the quality and speed of this printer; the color is simply awesome; not something you would expect from a portable, and the lightweight makes it a must for anybody on the road. This is a must have for any professional who insists' on detail.