New printers tout True Nature theme

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP) During a visit to the Canon factory in Bangkok several weeks ago, a group of IT journalists from Asia-Pacific countries were shown Canon's new line of inkjet printers, three new flatbed color scanners and a new projector.

Several of the products previewed during the event have now become available here, and I will give a brief overview of them. Unfortunately, I have not been lucky enough to get my hands on a demo unit as they are all still very new. A product review will have to wait.

The first thing that caught my attention then was the True Nature theme of the event. All printers, needless to say, contain parts that may end up as landfill, which is not always a welcome guest to the environment. Besides, the ink that is used to print color characters and images on the paper contains chemicals that may also be harmful to health (although HP, for example, has said that its ink is safe to swallow).

Environmental issues are increasingly important, and it is no surprise that printer-makers such as Canon and HP are working hard to let people know that they have done a lot to make their products environmentally friendly. Hence, I guess, the theme True Nature.

But Canon has extended the meaning a little further by saying that its new line of printers have the capability to print truly natural colors thanks to their use of new types of inks. The new inks, for example, help produce more natural colors of the skin and a broader range of color gradation on paper. It was no wonder, then, that the folders and brochures distributed during the event were all dominated by soft and natural colors.

New printers

If you are familiar with Canon's current printer lineup, you will know that this company used Super Printer (SP) for its BubbleJet printers. You may also remember that Canon's most popular inkjet printer was the BJC-3000SP. You will not find the SP among the names of the new models.

The cheapest among the new models is the new Canon S400, which has a local price of Rp 1.45 million. This printer, like the rest of the new ones, has a separate ink tank for every color.

This is much better than having three colors in one cartridge. The configuration, which Canon calls Think Tanks system, enables us to replace only the one that has run out of ink. In the past, we would have to replace the entire cartridge even though it still had some blue and magenta inks left, for example.

The S400 has a printing speed of nine pages per minute (ppm) for black text and four ppm for color output. Canon said that the speed was made possible by the use of a bidirectional printing method instead of the conventional unidirectional. The printheads keep spurting their inks as they travel back and forth over the surface of the page.

As mentioned above, there are also improvements in the inks themselves. Like HP, for example, Canon now also uses pigment- based black ink for better results.

Canon has also implemented its Drop Modulation Technology (DMT), which enables the printhead to place two different sizes of ink drops on the medium. The maximum printing resolution that this printer can reach is 1440 by 720 dot per inch (DPI).

Slightly more expensive than the S400 is the S450 (Rp 2 million, according to Datascrip, Canon's distributor for Indonesia). The S450 has all the features of the S400, of course, but it prints a little bit faster. It can churn out 10 pages of black text and seven color pages per minute. Since it uses six different color inks, as opposed to the S400's four, it produces better photo printouts.

An even better printer would be the S600. This one is not yet available on the Indonesian market, so Datascrip is not yet able to tell us the price. However, CNET has made it their Editor's Choice. In addition, in the poll that CNET did, of eight users who have tested the product, seven gave the thumb-ups to this printer. CNET claims the printer produces excellent plain paper graphics but so-so plain paper output.

Well, it sounds like this printer is a good candidate for use along with your low-cost laser printer, a setup that more and more people have chosen to have in their home office nowadays.

At 15 ppm for black text and 10 ppm for color, the S600 has a really fast printing capability. Besides, it can place ink drops as small as five picoliters on the paper. It also has a 2400 by 1200 DPI resolution capability, which makes it a very good photo printer.

The S800, which replaces the BJC-8200, costs Rp 3.375 million and is geared more toward photo printing. Its print speed is around two minutes per page for a full color A4-sized photo. It also incorporates several new technologies. For example, it uses high intensity color inks that, in addition to producing vivid colors, will not fade for more than 20 years even when exposed to light.

As you may have noticed, how long the photo prints will last before they start to fade is the feature that printer-makers have been competing on lately. Inside the S800 there is a printhead with 1,536 nozzles (256 for each color).

The model also incorporates the Photo Optimizer PRO, which combines Photo Optimizer and Auto Tone Control functions to ensure the best photo print results.

For those who need to print on A3-size paper, Canon offers the S4500, which costs Rp 4.025 million. This printer has been designed more for business purposes, though. For example, it can add the "Confidential" or "Important" stamp on the printout for you.

All the printers come in two-tone housing and use the Think Tanks. All of them accommodate both parallel and USB cables, so they are also compatible with the Mac. The S400, S450, S800 and S4500 can also be converted into a scanner by replacing the printhead with an optional scanner cartridge.

Again, I believe you had better buy a separate scanner if you have the space for it on your desktop rather than dealing with the hassle of changing the cartridges. Besides, the scanner in the printer will just give you a 600 or 720 DPI resolution.

For those who need to print in wider formats, Canon has the new BJ W9000, which will be a good choice for producing high quality posters, signs, banners and a variety of other full color large format materials. Canon also has two printers for CAD users, namely, the A0 capable BJ 3000 and the A1 capable BJ 3050. The printer-maker claims that, using the same DMT, both these CAD printers can print lines as fine as 0.07 mm.

In addition to bringing in the S600, next month Datascrip will also make available three new Canon scanners, CanoScan D646U, CanoScan D1230UF and the professional-class CanoScan D2400UF. Hopefully we will get the chance to test drive at least one of them. Stay tuned. (zatni@cbn.net.id)