With everything becoming portable nowadays, from computers, digital cameras to possibly even houses in some areas of the world (not the usual thing to have but I bet they’re working on it), it’s normal for the consumer to want to have and ask for a portable printer that they can take along with their digital camera or laptop when traveling. A travelers life, specially if it’s for business purposes is rather unpredictable meaning that you never get to know whether you’ll find a way to print where you’re going even if you’re attending a meeting or presentation of some sort.




So it’s no wonder that the idea of taking along a small compact printer in your luggage along with a laptop sounds like an extremely good idea. And manufacturers are starting to provide a lot of options that enable customers to do so. Canon is one of the top companies that offers portable computer printers. The company’s new Selphy line of printers is the top of the line when it comes to such products. But where did the company start and what was the beginning like in the development of compact and portable printers?

The Canon BJC-80 is one of their portable products that borrows many features from its bigger desktop brothers and scales them down appropriately to fit into a compact and easily movable shell. It’s very important to say that this printer is very old on the market and can be seen as one of the ancestors of today’s portable computer printers.

Back in the day it actually came with all the features a traveling professional might ever need. This sound a lot like the statement Bill Gates once made, claiming that ’640k ought to be enough for anybody’. Weighing a bit under 1.5kg it’s not a major inconvenience to carry. Because it features an infrared port the user can comfortably print without cables. Of course, the world has reached the point where Bluetooth or Wifi is a more viable choice, but back then IrDA was a viable and very exciting technology.

Now when it comes to wired connections this printer may seem a bit old for most people who have already moved on to the convenient world of USB 2.0. The BJC-80 offers connection through a standard parallel port so an adapter will be needed for anyone who’s using it with a notebook and not your old desktop from 1999. For the time it was released the BJC-80 offered great quality printing. It could produce around the same quality prints as normal sized desktop printers. It came with color and black cartridges and produced deep and realistic blacks. Another thing that was plain amazing back in the day when people actually still were curious of what was in the devices they used rather than just sitting them on the table and using them is that the ink cartridge in this printer could be replaced with a scanner head. This lead to the printer working as a scanner and allowing up to 300dpi scanning in 24-bit color. While it might be old it will run just fine with a Windows XP system. Unfortunately the product has been discontinued, but people who still own one are probably continuing to enjoy the features it offers.

Watch tweets on: