The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Multipurpose Machine Combines Printer, Copier, Fax in a Compact Space

For small businesses suffering from two common maladies--too small an office and too small a budget--electronics manufacturers are now offering an appealing solution: a multipurpose machine that combines a computer printer, a plain-paper fax machine and a copier.

It sounds like a concept that can’t miss: The combination units are priced as low as $650, far below the cost of buying the machines individually, and they save desk space, electric outlet space and file drawer space (where the instruction manuals and other documents from the separate machines might have been).

Even large companies might find the devices attractive for specific purposes, such as providing private fax and copying facilities for the boss. And for many home offices--not to mention individuals determined to be fully wired--they’re an excellent choice.

As you might expect, these machines have their share of problems. The printing tends to be slow, especially for anyone who is accustomed to a laser printer. As copiers, they’re limited. Businesses that can afford it will generally be better off with separate, stand-alone devices.

But for those who fit the profile, their are some interesting products available, including the Brother Fax2400ML (about $1,000), the Canon Faxphone B160 (less than $800 with factory rebate), the Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet (less than $800), the Panasonic KX-SP100 (less than $800) and the Ricoh Fax800 (as low as $650).

The Brother Fax2400ML is basically a fax machine with a laser printer built in, and it requires a $99 kit--combining serial cable and software printer driver diskette--to enable it to act as a computer printer and scanner and to send and receive faxes directly from the PC. But its printer and scanning resolution of 200-by-200 dots-per-inch is too low for high-quality business printing and for many scanning tasks.

Canon’s B160 looks like a fax machine, complete with telephone handset on the left side. Inside, there’s a 360-by-360 dot-per-inch BubbleJet ink-jet printer mechanism, a fully featured fax system and temporary storage memory for incoming faxes when the machine is busy printing or copying.

The HP OfficeJet, introduced last month, is also an ink-jet printer with 600-by-300 dot-per-inch resolution. It looks like a larger version of the company’s DeskJet printers, from which it evolved, and it has the best graphics printing ability of the bunch, with a 256-level gray scale. The fax features are complete, and the memory takes care of conflicts when faxes are received.

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The Panasonic KX-SP100, also recently introduced, incorporates a 300-by-300 dot-per-inch laser-quality printer, which produces the snappiest business-quality printing of the group. It sits upright, like Panasonic’s plain-paper fax machines from which it evolved, with paper trays that tip out to the side. With the trays snapped shut, the machine is about the size of a mini-tower personal computer.

The Ricoh Fax800 is a plain-paper fax using ink-jet technology, and prints at 360-by-360 dots per inch with an optional $150 parallel printer interface kit. It offers a typical range of fax features. In copier function tests among several of these machines on display in an office supply store, the Ricoh was a little slower than the others, but it was also a lot cheaper.

According to market research firm BIS Strategic Decisions, only about 28,000 printer-fax-copier machines were sold last year, but a boom is imminent: Sales are expected to reach half a million units--worth about $3.5 billion--by 1998.

And BIS has a favorite. The company expects Hewlett-Packard’s OfficeJet to get a big piece of the sales, given H-P’s position “as the leading vendor of electronic printers and scanners and the second-leading vendor of plain-paper fax machines,” according to Barry Tepper, senior industry analyst.

For this report, I compared the OfficeJet to a stand-alone Panasonic KX-F280 thermal fax and a Canon PC-2 personal copier. I also had copies of computer printing from the Panasonic and copier function reproductions from the Brother, Canon and Ricoh machines, and I played with several of the machines in stores. In all, the exercise revealed that choosing what to buy is more complicated than it appears.

First, the good news: The fax capability of all of these machines is good, and they have a variety of auto-dialing functions that make it easier to manage frequently called numbers. They have three resolution choices for faxing, to handle pages with graphics. All have fax input bins able to hold at least 10 pages.

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The copier function is more of a compromise, mainly because you can only copy individual sheets, not pages from a book or a magazine. On the other hand, these machines have multipage input and paper trays that the lowest-priced personal copiers lack, so you can copy multipage documents in one step, or make multiple copies of a single page.

The biggest issue for many potential customers, though, is the printing. Most of the machines are ink-jet printers, which are not as crisp as laser printers, and the ink cartridges cost a little more per page than laser toner cartridges. The Panasonic unit offers the best laser-quality printing, using a light-emitting diode (LED) imaging technology instead of a laser.

An equally important problem is speed. Some of these machines print only a page or two a minute, but the OfficeJet prints three pages a minute, the Panasonic four pages a minute. The Brother is capable of six pages a minute, but at draft-quality resolution. A good office-quality printer, by contrast, is capable of eight pages a minute or more of top-notch printing.

The speed questions applies on the fax capabilities too. The OfficeJet was noticeably slower receiving a high-resolution fax than the thermal Panasonic fax-only machine we have at home.

One page I faxed to the two machines was a map on a legal-size page, mixed in with several letter-size pages. The OfficeJet dutifully reduced the map to fit on letter-size plain paper, thereby making the finer detail of the map harder to read. Our thermal fax printed the legal page full-size, preserving all the detail. Of course, if you know something like that is coming in, you can load legal-size paper in all of them and the auto reduction feature won’t be invoked.

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If you already have an office-quality printer and a separate fax machine, you should forget about these devices and buy a copier--even if your fax is a thermal unit with roll paper instead of a plain-paper model.

And unless your office really is just a home office for part-time business or personal use, I think you ought to buy separate stand-alone machines for printing, faxing and copying. Your business printing needs to look as sharp as your competitors’.

But if you don’t have the money or don’t have the space or don’t need the machine for hard-core business purposes, then the combination machines can be a good buy.

Is an All-in-One Device for You?

Consider buying a multi-function printer-fax-copier if:

* You don’t already own a printer, fax or copier.

* You have no money or no space for three machines.

* You are an executive in need of occasional secure faxing, copying and printing.

* Your printing volume is light.

* You don’t need to copy pages from books and magazines.

Don’t consider a multi-function machine if:

* You already have a good printer and a good fax machine.

* You do a lot of computer printing.

* You need highest-quality printing.

* You do a lot of copying, and some of it is pages from books and magazines.

* You demand no-compromise, state-of-the-art equipment.

Today marks the debut of Business Computing, a monthly column by Richard O’Reilly, director of computer analysis for The Times. He can be reached by mail at the Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, or on the Internet at oreilly@latimes.com