The $20 dollar printer! - BJC 1000
Written: Aug 29 '00 (Updated Apr 13 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Very cheap!
Cons: Read on.....
The Bottom Line: If you just need to put "something" on paper, then maybe yes. But otherwise, avoid this like a plague!
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| maverick0516's Full Review: Canon BJC 1000 InkJet Printer |
This Canon printer came bundled with my nephew’s Emachines computer. Emachines simply wanted to sweeten the deal by adding this printer. It’s not a powerhouse printer but they say that it gets the job done! (Yeah right!)
At first, we all thought that the printer was great. I guess this is because this was our first computer system and the fact that this is the first time we’ve seen an actual inkjet printer in our house working! We were so fascinated by how it prints all these little pretty things like greeting cards and stuff. Since we didn’t have anything to compare it with, we thought it’s output quality was good. We even recommended the darn thing! =) But when I got my own computer and bought my own printer (Lexmark Z51). I finally realized that the BJC-1000 is a piece of junk! Well, it’s a paperweight, so it’s not completely “junk”! =)
Print quality
The BJC-1000 came with one color cartridge. You can buy a black cartridge for this printer but you can’t use color and black at the same time, because this one only has one slot to put a cartridge in. To put it in another way, this printer’s output quality sucks! When using the color cartridge, the letters that are supposed to be black, looks gray with a little bit of a green tint! Since it’s a color cartridge, it mixes all its colors to make black; the results are very poor. It also delivers poor color outputs. The colors look “washed out”. Colors are not vivid and it just doesn’t catch your attention! Sorry, I didn’t get to use a black cartridge. I was just not up to changing cartridges every time I have something to print!
The letters are so grainy. The printer is like a pre-schooler who couldn’t follow a straight line! Same thing goes for graphics. Printing on “better” paper is the same as printing on regular ones; the output is still mediocre! Nothing will make the quality any better.
Speed
What speed!? This thing is very slow! If you haven’t been using this printer for a while, it goes into some kind of “sleep mode”. When it’s time for you to print, it will make all these noises for about 30 seconds! It’s waking itself up! This printer does not have a power button, so you can expect on seeing this happen quite often. Ok! ‘nuff with the speed! This one’s like a turtle with three broken legs!
Bundled software
Now, this is where this printer shines! It comes with Canon Creative Home. It includes American Greetings, Colorstore, Crayola Print Factory, Snapshot and Textbridge Plus.
You can use A. Greetings to create cards, stationary, certificates and similar projects. Or if you’re feeling lazy or don’t have any idea of what to do, you can use Colorstore. It has a good wizard for making pre-made designs; you can make different-size cards, T-shirt designs, labels, envelopes and stickers. Canon also included some original fonts, a bunch of clip arts and images to help you design your projects.
Crayola Print Factory is the “For Kids” version of A. Greetings/Colorstore. When using this, your projects are more colorful with kiddy designs. You can do a bunch of cute designs with this one. Now, Snapshot is an image editor and also an organizer. After enhancing your pictures, you can organize them into convenient albums. Only useful when you have a lot of pictures in your computer!
Though, I don’t see any connection between a printer and an OCR software, Canon included Textbridge Plus anyway. You’ll only use this software if you have a scanner. This software allows you to scan text documents and then edit the scanned article! I’ve tried this software and it’s pretty accurate with only little missed characters.
Summary
Hey folks! Buy Canon Creative Home for only $50 and get a FREE BJC-1000 printer! Now, this sounds more interesting than saying it the other way! =) For most users, I definitely can’t recommend this one. But if you’re a person who doesn’t print often and on a tight budget, then this printer might be right for you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you though. There are better printers out there.
*Oh and yes, my review title is right! I've seen this on sale at Circuit City for $20 bucks! (after rebate of course) The newer models uses USB but I doubt that this would help in the speed category!
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
maverick0516
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Location: Northern California
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 12 members
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