The first inkjet device I ever used was a Canon bubble-jet typewriter. It was slow, messy and always running out of ink. That was more than 10 years ago. Canon since has made its mark with bundled printers sold with big brand-name PCs, and with small portables used with notebook computers.
The BJC-50 is Canon's latest in that second category. Only slightly wider than an A4 page, it is 49mm tall, 112mm deep and weighs a petite 900g - which includes a built-in rechargeable battery which can keep it going for 100 A4 sheets without a power socket.
Its only downside is that it handles only one sheet of paper at a time. Each subsequent sheet needs to be fed by hand.
That may seem a bit of a drag, but how often do you print 50-page documents on your notebook while on the road? The vast majority of business documents are only one or two pages, making a hand-fed printer less than the handful you might think it to be.
The most impressive of the BJC-50's features are speed, connectivity and print quality. While the 50 is small, the quality is on par with full-sized inkjets of comparable resolution, even when printing colour graphics and images.
Speed also was reasonable. You can do better with a desktop, but its performance did not involve the epic I'd-rather-be-watching-paint-dry wait times I have seen in older portables.
The BJC-50 can be connected to your laptop via a standard parallel port or by a wireless IrDa infrared connection. Finally, a use for that IrDa port. IrDa is neither fast nor does it produce the best quality prints, but for a quick draft, you can't beat its point-and-shoot printing ability.