Canon BJC-55

This inkjet printer is easy to carry as it weighs less than a kilogram. When on the road it draws power from a 10.8V rechargeable battery; or through the mains using a power adapter. It can be connected to your notebook via the USB port, or you can use the IR port. For IR printing, your notebook should have an IR port and required drivers. It uses two easily installable cartridges (black and color).

This printer supports media like high-resolution paper, transparencies, glossy paper, photo cards, and T-shirt transfers. We found the quality of text prints impressive, the text being readable up to the smallest font size of 2 pt. We then printed two pages containing text, which took just above 1.5 min, giving it an approximate speed of 1.5 ppm against a rated speed of 5.5ppm. This can be because of text coverage, font size, or resolution. It can only take one page at a time, so after the first print it pauses and waits for the next page to be inserted, which also takes a few seconds. We also printed color images and slides, both of which came out very well, though the photos took time to print. Overall, the printer performed very well in terms of quality of text and color printouts. Its print speed is a little slow, but it is meant for occasional printing, and not bulk print jobs.

It has a utility to create installation diskettes for Windows 9x/2000, which can be used to install it on notebooks without a CD-ROM drive. Some optional compo- nents are a scanner cartridge (to scan documents and photos), a photo-printing cartridge (to print high-resolution pictures), and an auto sheet feeder (to automatically feed in sheets).

Sachin Makhija