Home Forums Discussions General Discussion office equipment

Last friday, my staff asked me when I was going to replace my fax and scanner, as well as my copier! They are apparently wearing out, many years old... So the question is, "What are other small offices using for equipment?" I'm solo IM. I haven't used AC to it's fullest, and still maintain paper charts. I would like to make more of a move towards paperless. I do not have an interface with my local lab, or our reference lab, so at present I'm expecting the scanner will get a workout. Suggestions?

Tom
Creston, Iowa

I like my Xerox documate 515.

What is your reference lab? Should look at the voloume of labs and see if you can get interface. My small hospital is actually hooked up with the reference lab for their results and I got a PAML interface and that downloads everything (local pathology group is actually getting ready to send my pathology reports using the ssame interface).

We use a Fujitsu ScanSnap and it works quite well - my office manager (wife) uses it to scan in hundreds of pages per week and it has lasted several years.

As usual, Tom, I am a Brother MFC and their free Paperport software fan. I have had an issue with the automatic document feeders in the past but otherwise am very satisfied.

Leslie

Agree with Leslie. I have become disenchanted with HP and it's software. The big HP Colorjet 2840 'all in one' (we have three) have NOT been trouble free and are expensive to use. They were unnecessary as well, as we rarely need color and have only two of the three hooked to phone lines so they can fax. We now have three of the small Brother wireless, network compatible HL-2170W laser printers and love them. Print speed is awesome, cost is very good, and NO problems yet. And cheap enough to replace if need be.

I have a brother 7800 series (I think 7810) and and 8860. I have 2 offices.

The 7800 series I purchased gently used and has worked flawlessly.

The 8860 was a refurb and went through 2 rounds of replacements by Brother. Ultimately I pushed the repair up to a higher level and discovered that their reset instructions were wrong and they were setting it for another country so the paper feeder would not work. Hopefully they have changed their repair center instructions. Each time I called it was over an hour on the computer. It has worked flawlessly since then.

For scanning I use a Fujitsu Scansnap. It is much faster and intuitive than using the brother for scanning. Because we scanned old charts, I also picked up a Fujitsu M3093 off ebay for something like $75.00 and it does duplex at something like 30-40 pages a minute. It is great for bulk scanning but is large and takes up a lot of space. Great for going paperless.

I echo Leslie's love of Paperport that comes with the Brothers. It allows you to sign off and refax prescriptions and stuff that comes in. It allows you to create folders to sort the faxes into. It is easy.

Thanks for the recommendations. Hope all is well with all of you and all of yours. I wasn't sure how important "twain" is. Doesn't seem to be an issue.

Appreciate this board.

Tom
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Tom Young, DO
Internal Medicine Consultants PC
Creston, Ia

although you can import directly through twain, just hitting a button on the Scansnap and then importing the file off the folder or desktop is just as easy. Thus twain is not a big deal.

I think the brothers may have a twain interface. I actually have not tried it as they hare slower and make larger files.

Tom,

I think they are all very good. I particularly love HP (I must have had a different experience than Martin ) and we have a Xerox MFC after looking at Muratec and Toshiba. The Xerox is sweet but pricey.

No matter what you get, I would just consider two huge issues:

Capability of PC to Fax and Fax to PC and even more importantly, the software that comes with it for faxing from your PC. The Toshiba we had and I won't go into the cost, had the worst fax interface I have ever seen. I have no idea who designs these things.

And, is it networkable. You really don't want to spent $500 to $7,000 and not be able to network. I know the Brothers tend to work better by connecting via USB to a shared computer (from what I am told) and it seems to work well.