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Need laser MFC with network support

E

ecom

Senior member
I need a small multifunction machine for a small office. It will be set up in a 4 user office remote with no local servers. They have a 3/1 DSL line that connects them to the main office via site to site VPN. All the servers are located in the main office.

The reason for preferring scanning to CIFS share is because I'd like to be able to scan to the user's machines directly from the machine without having them invoke a piece of software. I do not want to scan something to the file servers only to have it pulled down immediately afterwards.

I prefer not to install any scanner software on the machines if I don't have to. That is more that can break and more software that the user might question me about.

Monthly printing is under 1000 pages. Over the past 3 years there were around 25000 pages/impressions from this office for copy, fax, and print.

Requirements:
Black and white printing
Laser/LED printing technology -- no inkjet
Copy
Fax send and receive
Color scan to network from the control panel, preferably PDF, JPG, or TIFF output
Preferable: support for CIFS share, if it can scan to multiple shares, even better
Acceptable: scan to FTP​
Web interface for remote management for most if not all functions
Automatic feeder for scanner portion
Duplex printing built in -- ie user does not manually flip paper to print on both sides

Optional:
Color printing
Duplex automatic feeder

Paper handling: no larger than 8x14 is required
 
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What is the budget? You may want to conisder a leased copier with these functions it may be cheaper to operate that directly buying something with all the features you are looking for.
 
Let's say $1500 for budget. I was thinking this would be fairly generous...

I saw a Brother laser MFC with all the above required capabilities plus duplexing ADF at Costco for around $400 but it does not support CIFS.

WinXP does support FTP via IIS, but I don't want to go down that route yet.
 
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Networked printers for small offices is certainly not my area of expertise, but I really wonder if you need CIFS.

Most small offices I know of just have one router, the various computers are hard wired to the router, they share a printer, and if they want something fancy like faxing or scanning, human being come standard equipped with legs that move them from their office desk to the central all in one unit.

But with a $1500 budget and not much printing, you could afford to have a cheap laser printer on every desktop, and then share a big central printer for specialty work. That way the user can remain sitting most of the time, and not have to get up and retrieve every single page they need from the central office printer. Which is the sad state of life in my wife's office.

And if you have rare needs for color, why not get another color laser? You can share it also, but most less than $5,000 color laser fail to deliver economical per page output. But if its use is restricted to only uses that need color, its affordable in terms of increased capacity and redundancy.
 
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