Canon MultiPASS C5500 Color Bubble Jet Printer, Copier, Scanner, Fax

by Canon

Product Details

Product Manual [2.36mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 15.8 x 14.2 x 8.1 inches ; 12.3 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 14 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00000JH6I
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 4, 1973

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

MultiPass C5500 convertible printer/fax/copier/scanner

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good as a monochrome printer / fax, July 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Canon MultiPASS C5500 Color Bubble Jet Printer, Copier, Scanner, Fax (Office Product)

We bought our 5500 for faxing and monochrome printing, and it turned out to be good for both of these. The color print option is rather slow. A key point is that it still functions for inbound & outbound faxes even when the PC is switched off, unlike some competing products.

The software installer is rather heavyweight: if you just want to install the Windows printer driver, be prepared to click "Cancel" a lot as the program tries to install *everything* on your PC.

There are some gems in the bundled software: Adobe PhotoDeluxe is great, and the TextBridge OCR is rather good.

The scanner is fine for monochrome documents, but glacially slow for color documents. There is also visible streaking on color scans from the passage of the document over the fixed scan head. Adobe PhotoDeluxe can only do so much to fix this.

The downside to the software is the annoying "MultiPass Manager" which must run continuously on your system if you want to print or fax. It constantly polls the printer and complains loudly and often if it loses contact (e.g. disconnected cable or switched off the printer). It is also utterly intolerant of any other program or device that wants to use the printer port (e.g. my Zip drive). I usually kill off MultiPass Manager until I need to print or fax, as it is so annoying.

In summary: buy this machine for its monochrome print & fax capabilities. You're better off buying a dedicated color scanner or color printer if those are important to you.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Buy it if UR rich, August 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Canon MultiPASS C5500 Color Bubble Jet Printer, Copier, Scanner, Fax (Office Product)

Its size appealed me and I bought this, only to regret later. First, the cartridge ran out of ink before 50 pages were printed. So, I had to buy new one for $49.99. The size of the cartridge is very small and costs more. If you are running NT, definitely do not buy this. The software will not let you print monochrome docs with BC60 (black only) cartridge. Also, I ran into problems that the fax/print will not terminate even if I pressed stop button. Scanner is impressive, but be very patient. Answering machine function is fine. To switch to Fax/Tel you have to go back to the software to change - would have been better if it was one of the functions on the machine.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's okay, but......., December 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Canon MultiPASS C5500 Color Bubble Jet Printer, Copier, Scanner, Fax (Office Product)

I've owned the Canon Multipass C5500 for a number of months. The fax function is fine. The scanner function is somewhat hard to figure out. My computer tells me the driver is not installed despite reinstalling several times, but it still works fine. Can't figure that out. It makes a lot of noise, is rather slow, and sometimes won't quit even when you push the stop button. Tech help was not very helpful. The little ink tanks run out fast. Make sure you have the pressure setting correct (inside the top). The function keys are confusing and you have to refer to the manual quite a bit. Set-up was not difficult once I figured out how to use the answering machine setting (have one on it, but the manual is a bit obscure in instructions. Buying a separate cable was annoying. The copier is okay. I print most things in monochrome black as the color tanks are expensive. All in all, it is handy to have several functions in one machine as a home user, but if I ever do it over will consider carefully having separate machines. On the plus side, it does conserve space and wire mess and was cheaper than buying fax/copier/scanner/printer.