Tech Focus
Good on Paper
The CRN Test Center looks at MFP offerings from Canon, HP and Xerox that offer ROI, quality and simplicity
By Edward F Moltzen
Take a company—say a real estate title business—that spends $5,000 a month to overnight documents to clients all over the country. Yes, the clients need the documents quickly. And yes, the postal service, UPS and FedEx have reliable means of tracking. But $5,000 a month? Does everything have to go overnight? What if that business could scan the title documents into a digital file, e-mail them or FTP them to the client, and then send the paper document by two-day delivery rather than overnight? Bingo: quantifiable savings.
An overnight letter can run $30 to ship overnight from New York to Los Angeles. Two-day delivery is about $13 on the major courier services. Suddenly, that $5,000-per-month cost for overnighting documents drops by almost $3,000 per month. That would easily cover the cost of a workgroup-quality, network-based multifunction device and consumables, and still provide a return on investment in about 30 days.
There are a few caveats, however. First, the multifunction printer (MFP) and supporting technology can’t eat into that savings with complexity that costs employee productivity. And, second, businesses and employees won’t tolerate poor quality. Security and reliability have been ‘givens’ with imaging and printing quality for some time, so that can’t be sacrificed either.
All of that leads to three critical elements of printing and imaging in the current economy: imaging quality, immediate return on investment, and simplicity.
We’re disappointed with the lack of standard USB 2.0 support in many of the newer MFPs we’ve examined lately. HP and Xerox, two market leaders, have recently shipped important products that lack this support—a decision that is mind-boggling.
One multifunction unit that provides fine image quality, ability to consolidate devices and USB 2.0 support is Canon’s ImageClass 9170c. We liked this MFP a lot, finding that it provided nice performance and quality, plus flexibility. It’s pricier than the others, and frankly more expensive than we would have liked to see (street price ranges between $1,800 and $2,000). |