My husband is self employed and frequently needs to send faxes and make copies. Up until two years ago, this meant going out to Staples or the local Mail Box etc. store and paying by the page. After some research, we decided to buy an ’’All in One’’-Computer Printer(desk jet), scanner, fax and copier. We purchased the Canon Multipass C5500 in September 1999.
The unit connects to the computer as a regular printer. The installation was a little tedious, but not difficult as you are prompted through each phase. You are given options for a fax cover sheet and options for receiving faxes (auto, manual, with answering machine etc.). The CD also contains some photo editing, greeting card and business form software that we have not installed and used. (we have other programs for these.) The unit comes with a detailed manual for use and troubleshooting.
Once installed, in order for the printer to be ready for use at all times, the Multipass Server runs in the background. You can disable this and restart it whenever you want to print, if you are concerned about having too many programs running.
The Printer. The Multipass printer produces nice quality prints of internet pages and work from the word processing program or home publishing programs. As with other printers, you can change the quality and paper type to improve the result. It also prints decent quality photos after some trial and error with color and paper type.
One small negative is that the Multipass does not stop or sound an alarm if you run out of ink.
The Scanner The Multipass uses a roller scanner so only single pages(from business card size to standard paper size) can be scanned. There is no ability to scan from a book. The scanning program is very complex for those not familiar with setting all the parameters. You can just use the ’’auto’’ scan choice in your home publishing program or photo editing instead. The scanner also requires the page to be put through the roller twice.
Fax. As I said in another review about faxes, we don’t usually use the Multipass for incoming faxes(we use efax.com). We find the combination of fax and answering machine too difficult to manage with one phone line. I have on a few occasions, created a fax with the computer and faxes it out via the Multipass and that works well. Most often, my husband sends faxes using the Multipass as a traditional fax machine. This doesn’t require the computer to be on. He can fax up to about 10 pages at a time. As with other fax machines, the unit will retry a busy number several times. It emits a very loud beep (you can shut this feature off) and flashes an alarm light when there is a problem.
Copier The Multipass makes black and white or color copies. It will make multiple copies of the same document. You can feed several documents at the same time. Copying also doesn’t require the computer.
Maintainance The manual gives clear instructions for cleaning and problem solving. The unit needs an occasional dusting and cleaning of the print heads.
The ink is in two cartridges color and black and white. This works well as 80% of the printing we do is black and white.
The usual reason given for not purchasing an all-in-one is that if one function goes down, you are without the whole unit. We’ve used the Multipass for two years without any problem.