Test reports
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Test reports
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For three years, I've been using a "Canon BJC-4200" printer. But because I print a lot and in color, those way too small ink cartridges were sand in my serenity. I fill them myself to save money, but it was difficult to determine the correct amount of ink when refilling. All three colors are in a single unit and you cannot see how much ink is left in each ink chamber.
I decided to buy a new printer for the new millennium: a discontinued model, the BJC-6200, for just 300.- DM (150.- Euro) - it had a transparent ink cartridge for each color.
I read on videotext that Canon would be introducing new printers in February, but I was still after that discontinued model. I had even ordered a disk from Irseesoft with new Turboprint drivers for the BJC-6200, 3000 etc. But of course..... no shop I went to had a BJC-6200 in stock.
Then, on January 26th, when I visited the MediaMarkt (a big chain of electronics stores in Germany - remark of translator), I found myself standing before a pallet of new printers from Canon. I was a little surprised, since they weren't supposed to be there until February. What got my attention was the price of the new BJC-S400: 250.- DM (125.- Euro).
Striking up a conversation with the assistant, I was told that this model was the successor to the BJC-3000. The successor of the BJC-6200 would be the BJC-S450 and would cost 450.- DM (225.- Euro) when it arrived within the next few days.
The BJC-S400 and BJC-3000, slot in below the more expensive BJC-S450 and BJC-6200, which are faster at printing, and use a 6 color cartridge instead of a 4 color one. I don't know how they differ apart from that. Since the Amiga will be the brake on both the interface speed and the preparation of print data, the faster speed won't probably be an issue anyway.
So I decided to go for the BJC-S400, even though I was wondering about drivers, as you do. At home, I set it up with the included 24 page manual "First steps" and connected it to the computer and mains. I already had the driver disk for Turboprint installed, which I had received from Irseesoft.
Since the printer is similar to the BJC-3000, I tried that driver in Turboprint. I loaded up a document in Finalwriter and sent it to the printer, but the progress bar didn't show any progress. So I tried the driver for the BJC-6200, with no luck either.
Fortunately it wasn't very late in the evening, so I called Irseesoft and described my problem. They told me that the drivers for the new BJC-printers were still a little buggy. I said I had especially ordered this disk and paid 20.- DM (10.- Euro) in advance. They asked if I had access to the Internet, to download the update to version 7.16 from their site. This version would have the bugs fixed. Guess what, I had already had my son do this, because I had read in "AmigaPlus" that you can now download updates for free and should because ordering disks can take forever.
So I installed version 7.16 with the fixed driver. The installation was fully automated and very fast. Once again, I fired up Finalwriter and tried to print. Same result as before. Then it occurred to me to re-select the driver after un-selecting it: finally, I was able to print, but only in black and white. I went to the Turboprint settings, where I saw that the black cartridge was selected. After changing this to "Color", my new printer produced colored print-outs.
Since then, I have printed about 150 color pages in 360x360dpi mode (Drop emulation).
I am very pleased with the quality of the output, and it is a little faster then the BJC-4200. I'm still using the cartridges supplied with the printer, and they are still about 50% full. An original ink cartridge is about 20-22 DM (about 11 Euro) and an black ink cartridge is 25.- DM (13 Euro). A new print head is priced at 120.- DM (60 Euro), but I don't know if ink is included. For the BJC-4200, inks were included, and the head was about 100.- DM (50 Euro).
The disk with the new drivers also contains a so-called BJC-Utility in the "Extras" directory. Using this utility, you can clean the printhead (normal or intensive) and test the printhead. It should work for these printers of the BJC-series: 1000, 2000, 4200, 4300, 4400, 6000, 7000 and 7100.
Besides the manual, the included CD-ROM also contains a 300-page-manual in PDF format. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to view it in APDF, even though APDF was working with other documents. So I had to view on my son's PC :)
If you have any questions about the Canon printers mentioned in this article, you can mail me at: Tschandru.Shing@berlin.de
Mathias Klingner <Tschandru.Shing@berlin.de>
