As one would guess, the low price comes at the cost of quality. In a side-by-side comparison to the mid-range Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 832c ink-jet printer ($200), we found that four times the cost equaled about four times the printer. In the Canon, magnified text-only documents, printed at the best quality, revealed many loose pixels around the letters. The HP was considerably sharper-- almost laser quality. Although color was vibrant and accurate in text and color documents in the Canon, the overall quality suffered due to the loose pixels.

Finally, we used PC Magazine's 7.5 MB test TIFF photo to print onto premium matte photo paper. The HP had rich and realistic tones with little or no banding, while the Canon image was washed out with repetitive banding throughout. Although the photo was acceptable by layman's standards (my $300 printer from college couldn't do this), don't buy the BJC-1000 for its photo-printing ability.

The BJC-1000 isn't the fastest instrument out there either. The manual states that the color cartridge prints up to .46 pages per minute and the black cartridge up to 3.1 ppm, both in standard mode. Our timing tests showed that both cartridges were nearly a third slower than that. And printing an 8 x 11 photo took a whopping ten minutes and forty seconds.

But you know what? We're going to give the BJC-1000 a little break. When considering the low cost and the inclusion of the excellent starter-software (Canon's Creative Home with hundreds of graphics and templates), this little Canon printer gets the job done, especially for novices, families, and people who have $50.

Just remember to consider the cost of "consumables," or cartridges. Manufacturers will give you a great deal on a printer these days, but because the bulk of their margins come from the sale of cartridges, they'll hit your wallet fast for things that need constant replacing. Street prices for the Canon cartridges range from about $20 for the black cartridge to about $30 to $35 for the color, photo, and neon (BC-02, BC-05, BC-06, BC-09F).



Company: Canon Computer Systems, Inc.
Telephone: 714.438.3000
Price: $49.00 after $30.00 mail-in rebate
Availability: Now
Category: Peripherals
Platform: Windows
Specs: 14.1 by6.4 by 7.0 inches, 4.8 lbs, Bubble- Jet ink-on-demand, 720x360 black, 360x360 color dpi, 10KB buffer RAM, Parallel interface; Paper Sizes: Letter, legal, A4, A5, #10, European, or greeting card envelopes; Built-in sheet feeder: 50 sheets @ paper weight 20 lb.; Noise level: less than 45dB; Fonts: 300+ TrueType fonts on CD-ROM; Power source: AC 120V, 60Hz; Canon Creative Home softwareSystem Requirements: IBM PC or compatible computer with a 486 PC processor or better, Windows 3.1, 95, or 98, 8 MB RAM, 40 MB hard disk space, Bi-directional parallel cable, 2X CD-ROM drive