Canon's innovative Color Bubble Jet printers lead the way in high-quality output.

In 1977, Canon researcher Ichiro Endo accidentally touched a needle full of ink with a hot soldering iron. The ink inside heated up suddenly, increased in volume, and spurted forth. That discovery by Endo, now Canon's Director of Product Development, led to the development of the ink jet printer.

In addition to introducing the first Bubble Jet printer in the market, Canon developed the first desktop Laser Beam printer.

Three decades later, Canon remains a leader in printing technologies with its innovative line of Color Bubble Jet printers, which deliver photo-quality full-color output in an office setting, at home or on the road.

"Our new product line is ideal for corporate use," says Eugenio Lau, Marketing Manager for Canon's Printer Products Group in Miami. "Our Color Bubble Jet printers can be connected to a network with an optional print server, or be used for printing reports, presentations, newsletters and many other applications right from the desktop. Our Color Bubble Jet printers are ideal for printing high-quality full-color materials for sales meetings."

According to Lau. "All our new printers have USB and parallel ports so they can be used with computers running with Windows or the Mac operating system," he says.

The "next generation" technologies of the Bubble Jet printers include:

* Wireless infrared connections on the BJC-50 and BJC-85 Portable Color Bubble Jet printers to print materials from notebook computers without the need for cables.

* Drop Modulation Technology for faster, high-resolution printing.

* Separate ink tanks that lower the cost per page. This feature is now available in the BJC-3000, BJC-61 00 and BJC-8200 models.

* Ink level detectors that signal when an ink tank needs to be replaced.

* An optional scanner cartridge that allows the printer to also serve as a scanning device. This option is available for the BJC-50, BJC-85, BJC-2000, BJC-2100, BJC-3000, BJC-6100 and BJC-8200.

In recent years, Canon has been an international leader in transforming ink jet printing from a low-resolution technique to an affordable, high-quality technology suitable for business applications. Partly as a result of Canon's innovations, sales of ink jet printers have soared past their laser counterparts. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), approximately 12.4 million ink jet printers were sold in the United States in 1998 versus 2.9 million laser printers. That figure is projected to jump to 22 million in 2001.

Today's Color Bubble Jet printers offer high-speed output at a real resolution up to 1200 x 1200 dots per inch (dpi) [*]. Their quiet operation and energy-saving features make them a natural part of the modern office environment. Even late-night printing can be performed free of worries.

Canon Inc., which devotes more than 10 percent of its annual sales to research and development, consistently ranks among the top 2 in number of patents granted in the United States (according to the U.S. Department of Commerce) and is widely considered a global technological leader. One major area of research has been developing new uses for Bubble Jet technology, such as textile printing and the image-format output of computer-aided design (CAD) images and graphics. Not only that but, Canon LCD color filters currently being sold to LCD manufacturers in their production of flat panels.

One of the reasons the Color Bubble Jet line is able to provide high output speeds while maintaining image clarity is Canon's Drop Modulation Technology. This technology allows the printer to output half-size drops in areas where greater detail is required, such as printing the image of a person's face. On the other hand, in "high-density" areas of the image, such as a dark background, the Color Bubble Jet uses larger drops of ink, thus improving printing speed.

Whatever the size of the drop, the shape is nearly circular with a constant density, providing clearer reproduction without the "graininess" found in other printers' output.

A significant cost-saving feature of the Color Bubble Jet line is the use of an independent ink tank system that allows users to replace individual colors of ink rather than an entire cartridge. "In most situations, the four ink colors: cyan, magenta, yellow and black - are almost never used up at the same rate," Lau says. "Typically, yellow is used at nearly ten times the rate of cyan. Yet, when one color of an integrated cartridge runs out, you have to throw away up to hundreds of pages worth of the other colors. The Color Bubble Jet's independent ink tank system means no wastage and much lower ink costs."

Ink tanks on the Color Bubble Jet printers are transparent, allowing users to visually inspect them to see if they're running low. In addition these Canon printers also have optical systems that monitor the amount of ink remaining by measuring the light reflected from prisms in each tank.

Once the ink tank is nearly empty, a dot counter ink level detector monitors the number of ink dots actually printed. When the threshold for that ink is reached, a warning is displayed on the monitor screen.

"If one of the inks runs out midway through a printing job, the Color Bubble Jet printer simply stops," Lau says. "You can then replace that ink tank and resume printing without having to start over again. This is a time-saving feature, especially if you're on a tight deadline."

Another cost and space benefits of the Color Bubble Jet printers are their ability to double as image scanning device. A user simply mounts the optional scanner cartridge in place of the ink cartridge, inserts the document or photograph into the scanning holder and places it in the printer sheet feeder. A CCD sensor ensures high-quality image scanning, and the powerful scanner driver minimizes the scanning time.

"The scanned data can be used with computer graphics and office programs for a number of purposes, from proposals to newsletters to e-mail messages," says Lau. "Once the document has been scanned, it's easy to exchange the cartridges again, add paper, and resume printing. This feature is exclusive to Canon."

The new Color Bubble Jet's printer driver software allows users to automatically correct digital camera images or other data for optimum coloring, brightness and contrast before printing. The software also lets users simulate illustrations or produce monochrome effects from their color photos.

Canon's Color Bubble Jet printers offer high quality output, high speed, superior cost performance, and a range of useful features. These products are available throughout Latin America and the Caribbean through their authorized

distributors in each country.