Printing to Multifunctional Devices

Why print to a local / work group printer when you can now print to your office mfd? Multifunctional devices tend to offer much greater functionality than local or work group printers and are much more cost effective from a total cost of ownership perspective.

Most suppliers of multifunction devices offer a fixed cost per page to print to the device which covers all toner, parts, labour and call-out charges. This ensures that budgeting is also easier to manage with the mfd's and running costs are typically reduced by over 50%.

Printing to mfd's can also offer a greater level of security. Mailboxes may be set-up for users so that they may print to the mfd but the document is not printed at that moment, users are able to print many documents over a period of time and then collect them all at once by inputting a PIN number at the multifunctional device and selecting the documents previously sent. This also vastly reduces the waste that tend to accumulate next to work group printers when users forget to collect their prints and printed output builds up on the printer which becomes difficult to separate into the separate print jobs and often discarded.

Print Server applications may also be integrated with multifunctional devices which can deliver further benefits. It is possible using applications such as uniflow which integrates with the mfd to have all print jobs sent to a print server instead of to the individual multifunctional devices. When someone wishes to collect the print jobs that they have been sending to the server they can walk up to any mfd and identify themselves and print their jobs from that device. If any machines become out of action the print jobs may simply be collected from another device.

Users may use choose to identify themselves at the mfd's by the following methods:

PIN Number entry
Pre-configured proximity cards (these may be cards already used for door entry systems or vending machines for example)
Biometric finger print recognition.

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