MULTI-FUNCTION ALL FOR ONE

Why take four machines into the office when you could take just one? hBut do multi-function devices measure up to their standalone counterparts hon price and quality?

The multi-function device (MFD) is an attempt to cash in on the fact hthat inside every fax machine there is a printer, scanner and photocopier hlonging to escape.

A fax machine consists of a scanning mechanism, a printing mechanism and a hmodem. Add a parallel interface and some fancy software, plug it into a PC hand you potentially have a single device that can print, scan, photocopy, hfax (from paper and from the PC) and answer the phone at the same time. If hthe printer is an inkjet, the output can be in colour, enabling colour hcopying for as little as #300.

The size of the MFD market is at least doubling every year, albeit from a hfairly small base, and some analysts predict that by next year sales of hMFDs could be almost equal to those of fax machines. As a result, hmanufacturers are gearing up for a massive marketing push. 'We're going to hbe active in MFDs this year because we've seen the opportunity to hestablish ourselves early on,' says Philip Davis, product manager for fax hand multi-function peripherals at Samsung.

This year's launches are already being fitted with additional hfeatures.

Hewlett Packard, for example, has included colour faxing in its OfficeJet h700, which sells for less than #400. Based on the ITU T30E standard, HP hclaims colour faxing takes only twice as long as mono and expects it to be hused for document proofing, instead of ISDN or huge email attachments.

Brother's MFC 740 includes all six main MFD functions - PC fax print, hpaper fax, copy, scan and answerphone - plus video capture. It can take hinput from a digital camera, VCR, TV, video camera, DVD etc, and print it hout via the colour copy function. Resolution is mediocre, but Brother hclaims it only takes 35 seconds to print a page and says it could be used hfor anything from storyboarding in video production to providing pictures hfor insurance claims.

Only last year, resellers and customers appeared wary of MFDs - and with hgood reason. They were big and clunky, choice was limited and speed, hfunctionality and connectivity were seldom as good as standalone devices. hAnd pricing wasn't competitive. But this year, MFDs promise to become one hof those oxymorons of the PC world - a mainstream peripheral.

Money is no longer an objection. 'Prices have fallen enormously,' says hTony Truslove, product manager for all-in-one devices at HP. 'Our range is hprobably between #100 and #200 cheaper than comparable products two years hago and that trend will continue.'

Samsung has dropped the price of its entry-level SmartJet product - colour hprinting and scanning, mono copying and PC fax - from #299 to #180, making hit a viable competitor for standalone inkjet printers. Xerox's personal hMFD prices have fallen by between 12 and 18 per cent a year.

More importantly, the difference in price between standalone devices and hthe MFD equivalent has dropped to as little as between #50 and #100, hmaking it feasible to upsell MFDs. When a customer comes in wanting a fax hmachine, it is possible to sell them an MFD instead, giving them several hextra features for just a few extra pounds.

Samsung's SF4500C - colour printing and scanning, mono copying, paper fax hand PC fax - has just been reduced to #350. Its almost identical sibling, hthe SF4500 standalone fax machine, costs #300, just #50 less. Xerox's XD h100 - 8ppm mono laser printer and digital copier - has been priced the hsame as an 8ppm standalone copier, at #779 plus VAT, so the buyer heffectively gets a PC printer for free.

Early MFDs were ugly and cumbersome. They were bigger and heavier than a hsingle printer or fax machine, which made them less attractive to hpotential buyers who were anxious to save space. Many of today's MFDs are hthe same size as a printer or fax and designed to the same stylistic hcriteria.

Some look identical to the standalone machines.

Choice is also increasing, even if it does not match the bewildering array hof standalone printers, scanners and faxes. HP and Xerox each field six hpersonal MFDs, Samsung has three, while Canon and Brother make four heach.

'Over the past few months, the choice of products has increased hsignificantly and we've seen a big rise in sales. The breadth of range hhighlights where this market is going,' says Alex Ward, business manager hat Midwich Thame, which distributes MFDs from Brother, Canon, Oki, Sharp hand Xerox.

But buyers are still worried about the wisdom of putting all their eggs in hone multi-functional basket. 'There's still a concern about reliability hand the fact that if one component goes wrong, the user has lost heverything,' says Truslove. 'People are also worried about redundancy - hif, for example, new scanner technology came onto the market, they'd have hto get rid of everything.'

But the manufacturers and distributors claim modern MFDs are as reliable has standalone machines and that the only real risk is that users will wear hthem out by exceeding the recommended monthly duty cycle. 'We rely on the hthe PC channel to understand customers' requirements and tell them what hthe machine can be expected to do,' says Phil Jones, general manager of hBrother's office products division.

Another accusation often made against first-generation MFDs was that they hwere just not as good as the standalone devices they were trying to hreplace. The basic functions were usually present, but copying speeds were hslower than a dedicated photocopier because the scanning and printing hmechanisms were low end. Faxing lacked sophisticated features such as hforwarding, barring, speed dialling and large memories for phone hnumbers.

Scanning was rudimentary, with some devices unable to edit scanned images hor even save them to disk. Software often required the user to send a fax hto the printer to print a document, and speeds could be slow.

Naturally, vendors claim today's MFDs are a match for most standalone hdevices. The printing and scanning engines are usually the same, so basic hspeed and quality should not vary significantly. And the features, usually hcontrolled by software, are often comparable.

Some even claim to be better than standalones, with features such as 2Mb hmemories that can store up to 140 pages of incoming faxes if the machine hruns out of paper, or digital answering machines with more than 90 hminutes' recording time. Only the modems remain below PC standard - htypically 14.4Kbps, or 9.6Kbps at the entry level - which makes them hunsuitable for internet access or corporate email.

It is still true, of course, that you get what you pay for. Low-end MFDs htend to lack more sophisticated features, while some can only copy in hmonochrome, even if they have colour scanning and printing mechanisms, hbecause this keeps the cost down. In simpler models, scanning and printing hmay share the same paper path - even if the paper appears to enter and hleave the machine by different slots for the two functions, the paths may hmeet up inside. This means that the MFD cannot multi-task - ie sending a hpaper fax while printing, or printing while scanning.

Manufacturers have to be careful not to include too many ancillary hfeatures which will appeal to relatively few users but put up the cost for heveryone.

For this reason, few MFDs include a telephone answering machine, because hit is assumed most potential buyers already have one and would balk at the hextra expense. Of the top five manufacturers, only Brother includes hanswerphone features in its higher-end models.

MFD buyers tend to home in on one or two functions - usually printing or hfaxing - and use the others on a more ad hoc basis. So the devices are husually designed to resemble either fax machines or printers. HP's hmachines are printer based, Canon's and Oki's are predominantly fax based, hwhile Samsung and Brother produce MFDs based on both designs. Xerox's low-end range is fax based, while its mid-range models look more like hphotocopiers. MFDs usually have the full feature set of a standalone hmachine in their main function, but may lack some of the more esoteric hfeatures in others.

Software and OS support have also improved significantly over the past hyear or two. As well as OCR and image editing, most MFDs come with a hsimple software interface which controls all the functions and provides hfeedback on job status, faults, paper jams etc. Most devices now support hWindows 3.1, 95 and 98, with NT 4 also becoming increasingly common.

Because of their simplicity, cheapness and the small amount of space they htake up compared with a full set of standalone devices, MFDs are suited to hhomeworkers and very small offices. These are either self-employed people hand micro-businesses - the Soho sector - or employees of larger firms who hhave a base office at home, such as mobile salestaff, financial advisers hand consultants - the corporate office/home office sector.

Soho users, who tend to be paying for their own MFD and may wish to share hit with their family for leisure use, tend to favour cheaper, colour hinkjet-based devices, retailing for between #200 and #400. Corporate and hsmall business users, whose firm is usually paying, tend to be equipped hwith monochrome laser-based MFDs costing #500 upwards, which have better hquality output, higher duty cycles and lower consumables costs.

Apart from some high-end products, most MFDs remain essentially personal htools. Of the five top manufacturers, only HP and Xerox offer networkable hMFDs and then only at the higher end with laser-based products.

But sales to corporate offices are still feasible, for example, for PAs hwho want their boss' faxes and copies to remain confidential. 'All our PAs hcan scan, copy and print from their desk and they have the confidentiality hof having their own printer,' says Truslove.

One final demographic that dealers should be aware of is the age of MFD husers. Research by Brother in the US showed 80 per cent are aged over 35 hand nearly a quarter are over 55. 'These people don't have the skills to hintegrate five or six peripherals onto their PC,' says Jones. 'They want hone product, one cable, one plug, one software CD-Rom and one set of hconsumables.'