The Printer of Choice for Laptops

After looking at several portable printers for my laptop, I decided on the BJC-80 by Canon. The reason I chose this particular printer is the cost to performance ratio and the fact that you can convert it into a scanner with a special scanning cartridge. So far I have not been disappointed with the quality of printing but the scanning feature leaves a little to be desired. Of course, I didn't expect it to be a really great scanner but it is sufficient for faxing on the run and loading documents when away from home or the office.

The printer is very portable being only 11.8 inches wide, 2.2 inches high and 6.2 inches front to back. It weighs only 3.1 lbs. and comes with a battery pack that adds an additional 1.4 lbs. when attached. The battery pack charge is supposed to last for 200 pages but I haven't printed that many pages with it in use yet. The printer has a regular parallel port interface and if your laptop has infrared capability, you can take advantage of the built-in IrDA interface as well.

It is not very fast printing only about 2 pages per minute in color and about 4 pages in plain text or black. The printing resolution is 720 x 360 dpi. which is not photo quality but good enough for documents or light graphic printing. The scanning ability is also fairly slow scanning about 1 page per minute in 360 dpi. color.

Operating systems supported are:
Windows 3.1
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows 2000
Windows ME

The paper is fed directly into the printer from the top and the tray holds about 20-30 pages. You can use several types of paper including glossy photo paper, transparancies, greeting card stock, envelopes and a few other types. Paper sizes are legal (8.5"X14"), letter (8.5"X11"), and #10 envelope.

Even though the printer is somewhat slow, it performs fine for my "away from home" needs. I would recommend the BJC-80 printer for people who need a portable printer and scanner in one easy to use, easy to transport package.