From: jgshir@athena.mit.edu (John G Shirlaw)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
Subject: BJC800 Colour printer
Date: 16 Apr 92 05:40:06 GMT
Organization: Massachvsetts Institvte of Technology

This is a subset of an article reviewing the cannon BJ800 which appears
in the April issue of Personal Computer World from VNU Business
Publications. The article is by Guy Swarbrick who is the magazines
editor.  PS if you can get hold of the magazine it is well worth it as
there are a number of mentions of the NeXT, this the latest edition
(May) includes a review of the new turbos.  This is copied without
permission.

Canon BJC800
-----------

NeXT has taken the engine from the colour printer and put that in its
new printer.

In Use:

In some ways it makes a refreshing change to find a product from a
successful manufacturer that is so clearly a turkey.  Yes, so far the
BJC800 has looked good. It's well designed and well engineered.  The big
problem is that it doesn't work very well.

Print out some simple coloured text.  There will be a little bit
of smudging ( less so with the coated paper cannon recommends but doesn't
insist on), but generally the quality will be pretty good.

Load in a bit map.  My favorite test involves Fractint for Windows.  I
produced a plasma fractal, and mapped it onto an artificial landscape,
then printed it.  The original was a glorious mixture of red, greens and
blues;  the printed image was a muddy mess.

>>>bit describing creation of mixed text and bit map image.

Much as I expected, the text was acceptable and the colour bitmap
awful.  Intrigued, I decided to run the same test on HP's DeskJet 500C.
The results were quite surprising.

Under normal conditions, the colour images produced by the HP are
slightly better, the coloured test about the same and the black and
white bitmaps and black text much worse.  One of cannon's great claims
for the Bubble Jet is that the separate black cartridge gives the
printer an enormous advantage over its rivals.

This is only partly true.  Pull up the DeskJet's Windows driver and
select 'advanced scatter' and two things happen.  First the speed drops
by about 50%.  Second, the quality increases exponentially. Subtle
details in the colour bitmap which were invisible before are now there,
if not obviously so.  More important, the over-bold ,smudged,
purple-green text and bitmaps have been replaced by crisp, clear, black.
Well, OK: crisp, clear, dark gray.

The Bubble Jet is not beaten yet.  Select its 360 x 360 resolution mode.
The drop in speed is far more marked than with the HP.  And the result?
The colour bitmap is slightly better - than the low resolution mode.
It's miles away from the HP.

When we told the people at Canon how bad we thought the images were,
they said we had a faulty machine.  They said they'd come and take a
look.  They didn't.


Conclusion
----------

In any rational sense, the BJC800 is lousy.  Like the BJ-10 before it,
it suffers from poor print alignment in graphics mode but, thanks
largely to the beefed up design, not to the same extent.  Nor are the
four inkjets in combination capable of producing a wide enough range of
colours to justify the outrageous price tag (#1995.00).

I don't think that's what the Bubble Jet is about, though.  I'm not
quite sure what it is about, either.  If you want to produce
transparencies for overhead projectors with text highlighted in bold,
simple colours, with the occasional pie chart, you have three options.
The BJC800 will do it,no problem, but it won't do much else.  An HP
DeskJet 500C will do it and make a better, though still not very good,
attempt at full colour images.  Perhaps most sensible of all would be to
redesign your presentations for black and white (Which can , belive me,
look just as good, done properly) and buy a low end laser printer.

What of canon's claims that our printer was a rouge? Frankly, I'm not
convinced.  Even without the banding and the poor colour definition,
though, you'd be hard pushed to justify a #1000 price tag, never mind
#2000.

If you must have colour and A3 and you must have the ability to print
black as though it had come from a conventional printer, I guess you're
stuck with the Bubble Jet.  But at least your wallet won't be as
uncomfortable to sit on.


--------------End Article---------------------

Note this review was of the BJC800 not the NeXT printer...Whether NeXT
have managed to solve any of these problems I can't say...Though I would
be interesting in hearing.  As always be your own judge!

Hope this was useful...As I said at the top buy the magazine for much more detail
etc.

john