Derrick
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They're not suited to busy office environments, but for home and small business needs they are a bargain.
The downward march in the price of IT products is relentless. In the early 1990s, it cost more than R10 000 to buy a scanner that today wouldn't even be considered an entry-level device. Yet manufacturers are now producing multifunction devices that can scan, copy and print documents and photographs for as little as R500.
They're not suited to busy office environments, but for home and small business needs they are a bargain. We looked at a multifunction printer from Epson, the Stylus CX4300. Priced at just under R700, the 5 kg CX4300 prints plain text to A4 at a zippy 25 pages a minute, with colour text at about half that speed. It also prints 10 cm x 15 cm colour photos in 90 seconds. It takes four seconds to copy a black-and-white page and eight seconds for colour.
The A4 flatbed scanner is 600 dpi, more than suitable for office tasks. Optical character recognition software is included, as is the usual basic photo-editing and touch-up software.
Of course companies like Epson make their money not from the printers they sell but from the consumables, the ink cartridges. But the CX4300 has an important advantage over some of its rivals. The machine uses separate cartridges per colour, eliminating ink wastage. Cartridges cost R136 each.
Print quality is good for a device this cheap. Text printing is nearly up to laser printer standard, and photo quality, though not as good as a dedicated photo printer, is acceptable.
The downward march in the price of IT products is relentless. In the early 1990s, it cost more than R10 000 to buy a scanner that today wouldn't even be considered an entry-level device. Yet manufacturers are now producing multifunction devices that can scan, copy and print documents and photographs for as little as R500.
They're not suited to busy office environments, but for home and small business needs they are a bargain. We looked at a multifunction printer from Epson, the Stylus CX4300. Priced at just under R700, the 5 kg CX4300 prints plain text to A4 at a zippy 25 pages a minute, with colour text at about half that speed. It also prints 10 cm x 15 cm colour photos in 90 seconds. It takes four seconds to copy a black-and-white page and eight seconds for colour.
The A4 flatbed scanner is 600 dpi, more than suitable for office tasks. Optical character recognition software is included, as is the usual basic photo-editing and touch-up software.
Of course companies like Epson make their money not from the printers they sell but from the consumables, the ink cartridges. But the CX4300 has an important advantage over some of its rivals. The machine uses separate cartridges per colour, eliminating ink wastage. Cartridges cost R136 each.
Print quality is good for a device this cheap. Text printing is nearly up to laser printer standard, and photo quality, though not as good as a dedicated photo printer, is acceptable.