Office Printer/Scanner..any recommedations?

techo2007

Hi all,

I am researching a new networked Printer/Scanner for the office c.5 users.
The requirement is to allow colour printing (poss. upto A3 size) and scanning over the network. We would like to be able to scan directly to PDF and allow email or send file directly to a folder on the server.
At the moment we have a HP OfficeJet G85, but the scanning aspect is a big pain (drivers not fully compatible with XP). Any help would be gratefully appreciated

Zirconia

Hi,

I've just upgraded from an Officejet G85 to a Xerox Phaser 6110MFP which is a colour laser/scanner/copier. I've only had it a few days, but it seems pretty good. It shares the same mechanics/electronics with Dell 1815n and Ricoh RX200 MFPs (and probably others), so you should never have any problems with parts and consumables, and it can scan to email, or to a server based folder, and even to a USB memory stick (has a USB socket at the fromtpanel for this!). It will scan to any of these in several formats, including PDF. The only thing it dosen't do is A3 size printing or scanning however, and there are two versions, one with fax and one without - which is the one I got.

I thought the G85 was a great MFP, and I never had any problems using it with XP. I only upgraded because I wanted a laser, and I wanted it networked without being connected to a PC.

I got my 6110mfp from Pixmania.ie for about 420 + VAT (the version with fax will cost a bit more if you need it), and it was delivered within a few days.

watty

Network scanning on anything is pretty rubbish. It does work but speed, quality, adjustments etc pathetic compared to a Scanner on a PC. One experinced person can do scanning unless you want it to look like 1970s photocopies?

A3 is 4 to 10 times price of A4 because it is not such a mass market product. Products tend to be older and have longer life cycle, but also tend to be higher quality.

Zirconia

watty wrote: »

Network scanning on anything is pretty rubbish. It does work but speed, quality, adjustments etc pathetic compared to a Scanner on a PC. One experinced person can do scanning unless you want it to look like 1970s photocopies?

Well it really depends on what the objective of your scanning is. In most office and business environments the purpose is document management and archiving. Apart from my own setup, I've worked with scanning solutions for large businesses using network based scanners and they suit this function ideally.

The output requirement for these is a 300dpi mono document image (i.e. one bit per pixel) and stored as either compressed TIFF or PDF, which may or may not also be used for OCR. These files are usually less than 50KB per A4 page (sometimes less than 20KB I find) which is a primary concern in document archiving.

Network scanners on MFPs might not be ideal for photo scanning - but only because they aren't as high resolution as dedicated scanners. If 300 dpi is enough resolution then you can tweak and adjust a TIFF file sent over the network just as much as one sent by a local TWAIN connection.

If you need photo quality and high resolution, then get a dedicated scanner. If you need online copies of your documents to sort and search easily, send via email or fax, or to extract back to text using OCR, then network based MFPs do just as good a job.