I had owned a black and white Canon BJ 200 for 5 or so years before purchasing the BJC 2100. The 200 never gave me a problem, and because of that, I thought I could trust Canon to market a good printer. The only reason I bought the 2100 and gave away "Old Faithful" is because the price of ink for the 200 was outrageous: nearly $30 per cartridge! I found the 2100 on sale at Sam's; after the rebate, the price was only $50. I thought a color printer for the price of 1.5 ink cartridges was a great deal. And it would be a great deal if the printer was decent. But now I wish I had kept my $50 and my old, reliable printer!

Some of the features of the 2100 include dual black/color ink tanks and a handful of print quality modes (the highest quality mode gives a fairly decent printout, but it is super slow!) There is also a pretty good assortment of options for print media (such as envelopes, transparencies, etc.), although all I have ever used is plain paper and high resolution paper. My printer came with some American Greetings graphics software. Also, note that no printer cable is included.

The 2100 worked just fine the first 6 months we had it, and I congratulated myself on getting such a good deal. Sure, the print quality wasn't the best in the world and the printer was super slow, but I could deal with that, remembering we only paid $50. The printer is only needed for occasional home use, so we didn't need anything too fancy or speedy.

Then one day my husband went to print out a term paper for one of his college classes and nothing happened! Well, the printer went through the motions of printing, but not a bit of black ink appeared on the paper. He put in a new ink cartridge and tried printing once again.... still nothing! He was almost late for class by then, so off he ran to the computer lab on campus to print out his paper at 7 cents per sheet.

That night we tried using the printer again, and after cleaning the print head several times, we were able to get a very streaked printout.

Next day, the printer worked perfectly, as though there had never been a problem.

Over the past month or two, we have gone through this sequence of events several times. We can't depend on this printer to be reliable, (it always seems to quit working properly when we need it the most) and for that reason, we're in the market for a new printer (NOT a Canon!) and I'm ready to hurl this $50 piece of junk out the window!



Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 50 w/rebate
Operating System: Windows