The Basics: All In One Printers
All in one printers, also known as multifunction office machines, give you several capabilities in one product, usually including printing, copying, faxing and scanning. These machines best serve a small office or a home office, where you might not have desk space available for several different products.
Multifunction office machines, also called all-in-one devices, have made great strides in recent years in becoming easier to use and more compatible with several computing systems. While the individual features found in the majority of multifunction office machines can't match those found in the best individual components, these devices are steadily improving the features they offer.
How to Shop
Multifunction office machines typically use one of two types of printing: inkjet or laser. If you need color printing capabilities, you'll probably want to choose a model that uses inkjet technology. Laser units will yield a higher output quality, but most of them can create only black-and-white documents. Color laser models are fairly expensive.
Before you purchase a multifunction office machine, you'll want to do some homework. What functions will you use most often and least often? Look for a multifunction office machine that contains better-than-average features for the functions you'll use most often. You can skimp on the features for the functions you'll use least often.
Remember that some multifunction office machines can copy or scan in color or black-and-white; others can copy and scan only black-and-white documents. Also keep in mind that some units don't contain all four functions common to multifunction devices (copying, scanning, printing and faxing). If copying is an important feature for you, we suggest selecting a multifunction office machine that allows glass-top copying. If faxing is an important feature, make sure the model contains plenty of memory for storing documents.
An important feature that's worth paying some additional money for is speed. A multifunction office machine that runs slowly will be frustrating to use.
