Canon BJC-55 Color Bubble Jet Printer

I've had many of these over the years. I have one I carry, one at home when I need two printers working, and one for back-up. I refuse to be without one. I carry one in my suitcase as I'm a frequent traveler and need to be able to print and scan as necessary. It prints beautifully and works with all MS O/S thus far (not tried on Windows 8).One thing to be aware of is that it doesn't have a box to carry it in. After years of jury-rigging I found a box used for auto-claving is the perfect fit and protects the printer quite nicely. This box costs less than $10, plus shipping, and is extremely sturdy. I wrap the printer in a large camera gear protective cloth (a hand towel would do as well) and place it in the box. The box is: Autoclavable Plastic Instrument Box - 14" x 6 1/4" x 2 1/2" - Sand(1 Box) from www.medidose.com

I really love this printer. Over the years I have purchased three of them. The ink can get expensive, especially if you are overseas.

I would have given 5 stars except that it did not come with either a printer cable or the storage unit for the not in service ink cartridge. An installation disk came with the printer for Windows XP and Canon told me there were no drivers for Windows 7. I manually installed the printer and the computer found drivers for it. It works just fine on either of my 2 machines, one on XP the other in Win7.

Even after all this time, this is a hard portable printer to beat. Incredibly compact, up to A4, battery powered and can even function as a scanner.This printer is truly tiny, about 12" x 4" x 2". USB and IRDA infrared on one side, power and lock switch on the other. Printhead access on the top, sheet input on one side, output on the other. The sheet path is flat so you might get away with fairly heavy paper or thin card. There are three different printheads available: black ('high-capacity' as it were), colour (two catridges) and photo (two cartridges). The ink tanks fit in the printhead rather than being a part of it like some other printers. This reduces the cost for the refills. Which you will need a lot of as they are very small.There is a lock switch on the side to prevent it being turned on accidentally. You can set the auto-power-off time from within the printer driver down to as little as 30 seconds. Drivers are supplied for versions of WIndows up to XP. XP has 'in-box' drivers and willrecognise it automatically. You might get it working on later versions of Windows with patience and research. I use it with an XP netbook. THE AC adaptor gives out 13V so a generic one may not work well. Indicator lights oin the top show when the battery is charging. The battery is replaceable.Accessories:Auto sheet feeder. This more than doubles the size of the printer, but obviously can be detached for use on the road. It's reliable and doesn't misfeed. Printer porperties need to be set accordingly for it to function correctly. Alleged to hold 50 sheets, it can do more.Scanner cartridge. This fits in the place of the printhead and will (slowly) scan up to A4. Mono scanning is relatively fast but colour scanning requires three passes for each band (one each red, green and blue) before the paper advances by the width of the scan sensor. The software is functional, but you will need to get creative to get it to work on anything beyond Windows XP. There are instructions on how to get it to work in several places on the internet.Cartridge case. A round container with an airtight seal with a hollow specifically shaped for the cartidges and scanner.Battery. Clicks into place inside the input tray flap. You aren't supposed to use the printer without one.Pros:Size. Battery. Scanner. Weight. Sheet feeder.Cons:Slow. Power lead opposite USB so cables everywhere. Teeny ink tanks.There are 12V car adaptors available, but they aren't warrantied and Canon do the usual 'only use the specified adaptor' thing. Use an inverter and the supplied adaptor if you are nervous. I've never had it misfeed and the rinthead cleaning cycle is effective. You can put the printhead on damp paper towel to unclog it. This printer cost me a fair bit, but it was definately worth it. I sue it on my boat where it lets me print off weather reports downloaded on my netbook via phone tethering.

I JUST BOUGHT THIS PRINTER FOR MY LAPTOP.IT WAS VERY EASY TO INSTALL AND EASY TO WORK WITH. THE PRINTING IS GREAT, AND QUICK FOR A BUBBLE JET. THE COLOR IS VERY GOOD.

On the go, I frequently need to print out documents, be it invoices, reciepts, e-mails, etc etc so I decided to purchase this product. Words cannot describe my feelings toward it, I use it soo much with the laptops I don't know how I lived without one before. Installation on Windows 2k, and ME was flawless, both using the Fast IrDA.The printer is just the perfect size to slide in to my briefcase, and adds little weight. It's battery operation is really what caught my eye, it says you can print about 100 pages with a full charge, but I think its a bit less than that. However, the battery takes little time to charge.I was not aware it would come with as much ink as it did, came with 2 color cartidges, 1 black (small), and 1 black (large), as well as two trays that they are held in. The Fast IrDA is such a fabulous thing, wireless printing all the way. I decided to purchase a USB cable, its much easier some times using the cable then the IrDA (Infared) port. The quality of the documents is fantastic, matching (and beating!) my desktop printers at home. The speed is good, considering this is a portable printer. The only real drawback is that it is a single sheet feed printer, unless you buy the paper loader, which I will surely do! This is THE BEST portable printer I've found on the market, it is well worth the money.This is a small update, I've been using the printer for about 5 months now, and everything has gone smoothly. I purchased the auto-sheet feeder from Canon (directly, from their web site) and it performs just like a normal desktop printer would! I'm still loving it.