ANAHEIM, Calif. -May 22, 2002-- Continuing to dazzle office equipment industry watchers, the Canon imageRUNNER product line has received new recognition for its quality, reliability and consistent performance from three of the industry's most well-known, prestigious groups -- Buyers Laboratory, Better Buys for Business and Industry Analysts, Inc. Canon U.S.A., Inc., a subsidiary of Canon Inc., disclosed the latest awards during the Company's Digital Solutions Forum taking place May 21 - 23 at the Anaheim Convention Center. "Canon's imageRUNNER continues to impress our customers and industry analysts alike for its overall quality, reliability, value, and ease-of-use, as acknowledged by Buyers Laboratory, Better Buys For Business and Industry Analysts, Inc.," said Tod Pike, senior vice president of Marketing for Canon U.S.A.'s Imaging Systems Group. "Canon will continue to look to these well-known and respected entities in the office equipment industry as informative sources regarding which manufacturers are providing the best products and customer value." Buyers Laboratory named Canon's imageRUNNER series the "Most Outstanding Copier-Based Multifunctional Product Line of the Year," for an unprecedented third year in a row. In her review of Canon's 2002 imageRUNNER line-up that appears in the May 2002 issue of the Digital Imaging Review Newsletter, Buyers Laboratory Managing Editor Daria Hoffman writes, "Never before in the 15 years that BLI has presented this award has any vendor won it three years running. Attesting to the extraordinary consistency of Canon's imageRUNNER line is that of the five additional imageRUNNER models evaluated ... every single one earned BLI's "Highly Recommended" rating and all won "Pick of the Year" awards for 2002 in their respective segments." Hoffman specifically cites the reliability of the imageRUNNER models, saying, "In what has emerged as the standard modus operandi for imageRUNNER products, they all completed their BLI tests with no service calls other than preventative maintenance visits. Amazingly, when the test performances of all imageRUNNER products still current in Canon's line are considered, a total of 4,477,500 impressions were produced with just three service calls, for a phenomenal Mean Impressions Between failures (MIBF) rate of 1,492,500." Better Buys for Business Editor-In-Chief Jon Bees agrees that Canon imageRUNNER products are among the best in the industry. Better Buys for Business produces independent consumer guides to document-imaging equipment, and its editors bestow "Editor's Choice Awards" on the products they believe will deliver the highest levels of performance and offer the greatest value for consumers in a given price range. Better Buys For Business recognized four Canon imageRUNNER products in 2001 and is doing so again in 2002 in its Mid-Volume Copier and Multifunctional Guide. "Canon offers great technology and sets benchmarks with its aggressive pricing," Bees said. "We review products from all the major equipment manufacturers and find that Canon imageRUNNERs consistently perform at the top of the class. The models feature strong functionality, impressive performance, and competitive pricing, and offer customers solid value for their money," Bees added. Canon also receives high marks for customer satisfaction from Industry Analysts, Inc. Included in its monthly newsletter, The Office Products Analyst, Industry Analysts' annual survey of multifunctional office products reports that for 2001, Canon's imageRUNNER devices recorded the highest overall Effectiveness Ratings of Features/Functions, a combined rating that measures the importance of a feature combined with users' perceptions of its importance. This article may be viewed for free in its entirety until May 31, 2002 at www.industryanalysts.com. Says Andy Slawetsky, Senior Analyst with Industry Analysts, Inc., "Canon end users gave Canon MFPs the highest effectiveness ratings in such critical areas as image quality, ease of use, network capability and other key performance factors. The company has made great strides over the past several years with its imageRUNNER line and imageRUNNER certainly is now one of the strongest products in the industry."