Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The printer, copy, and scan functions all work great. I have only tried to fax a couple times and couldn't get it to work. The ink cartridges run dry frequently, one went out in only 11 days. I am not sure if it is because the cartridge dries that fast or because the print head gets clogged quickly and thinks its dry. Even with cleaning the print head it still runs out of ink too fast.

I use this Canon machine mostly for printing, and copying use. However, this can only scan sheets as there is no area on the machine to print bulky books. I was dissappointed this fact. It prints well when there is ink, but I have to constantly buy a lot of ink cartridges because it runs out quickly. Although the price might sound appealing, a higher priced all-in-one machine might be a better buy.

This is not an easy machine to use. It is much slower than my Epson 640 printer. Also, the basic setup encumbers your computer with a lot of cumbersome software. I recently ran a scan that took forever and afterwards some of my other programs were corrupted and had to be reloaded. If you don't do too much printing, this machine may be ok for you, but as a workhorse it's fairly poor.

Found this version of the multipass to be a reliable machine. But it DOES USE ALOT OF INK! If you think of purchasing the multipass do yourself a favor and get the 6000 series which is the laser copier.

This multipass C5500 is a very good all-in-one machine. I recently purchased a new Dell computer, but this machine is not compatable with the XP os. I need to sell this one and buy another multifunction that will work with my new computer. I have the original box it came in, the software, documents and extra black cartridge still in the package, unopened, that goes to the successful buyer. This machine is in excellant condition and have never had any problems with it . I am the only owner. I purchased it new. Thank you for your interest. Daniel Rogers

Seller was Great. All you could possibly ask for in customer service and attention. The product on the other hand was not so great for me. Never could get it to print and seemed to have a catch 22 situation with the print cartridge. Would get a error message saying the wrong print cartridge was installed. So I changed the print cartridge to another type. Got another error message saying wrong print cartridge installed and that the print cartridge I had just removed was the one I needed to use. Hmmm!! Tryed unloading and reloading the software. No help. Finally gave up and bought a new printer. Put this one in the trash. Only bought it because I had 10 packs of ink left from a previous printer that had also gone kaput!