Canon i860

[Whizbang]

The "suspense" is over and I unveiled my new i860.  Much to my delight, I found that the head is removable and not part of the tanks.  That means that if printing begins to deteriorate, a dip cleaning could be in order.  At worst, a new head could be purchased instead of throwing out the whole printer.  I have not yet printed any photos because all of them are on my R-CDs and I did not make them readable on normal CD players such as the one on my PBell.  I am going to pull one of my photos off Webshots and try printing it.

If my BJC-240 is a jeep, the i860 is a Sherman tank.  It is about the size of a small microwave.  I had to find a different place for it because the paper feed tray did not have enough overhead clearance.  It has an HP look about it with silver on grey exterior.  The print head must be program-aligned before use, since it must be snapped in after printer unpacking.  The installation program cannot be done with normal Windows hardware procedure but with installation CD (They make a point of emphasizing that).  Part of it is accomplished with printer off, part with printer on.  Documentation is up to the high Canon standards, but this printer is not for the faint-hearted who hate to read.  

It does have a convenient on-screen on/off button that can be accessed from computer Printers icon.

The included CD also has several hundred megs of editing, webpage, and photo-printing programs.

I probably will not know how well this baby performs until I get my main unit upgraded.  My PBell really labors at churning out any "heavy" stuff.

I will let you know more later.

DISCUSS HERE

[Whizbang]

I finally churned out a color print on the i860 using my pitiful but faithful PBell 200.  That was a real grind!  It took about three minutes just to start printing.  In fact it was taking so long that I decided to go put my daughter's cats in her house for the night and do the cleanup, cleanout, and feed routine.  By the time I got back, the print was finished, and so was the PBell, until reboot.  The screen had gone black, and nothing was responding.  I started at about 92meg free on that print and likely ended up near zero with a memory bailout.  I was using RamBooster, but when the CPU is running near 100%, you are headed for trouble anyway.

The print is perfect, from a reproduction standpoint; it is completely indistinguishable from the JPEG on file.  That is a first.  I used the default setting with no enhancements, glossy photo print, high resolution and very cheap glossy generic paper.  I have no intention wasting more than necessary before I get the knack of this thing.  But, I will not be running any more prints with the PBell on this printer.  I am not that sadistic.

The i860 is virtually silent in printing, but initial feed produces a quick loud "clack."  The noise lasts only a fraction of a second, but I cannot imagine why they did not do some sound dampening on the feed.  It is a minor thing.  This unit still costs about $50.00 less than my BJC-240 did in 1996.

I am looking for a photo viewer program that will not remove the "no border" feature from the i860 printing options.  Windows viewer goes nuts, and Active Share still leaves a thin border.  Until I get my new main unit up, that will have to wait, as in tinkering with PSP 7.01.  It is a small thing, but I figure that if the viewer messes up that minor detail it may insert its opinion elsewhere too.

If you are going heavy into photo rendering, I would advise that you max out on memory installation.  Photo reproduction takes more RAM than any other activity I know, and high resolution scanning can easily take nearly 100meg per image.  I do not know how a printer would respond to that.

This is the original print on file at :Webshots