Monday, May 12, 2008

Our Multifunction Device died today

We have an ancient dinosaur of an MFD -- an HP OfficeJet G85. Shelley was printing something on it and the carriage decided to jam and stay stuck that way. It clicks and rattles and it keeps telling me to unjam it. I opened it up but couldn't find any jam, nor does the cover open up sufficiently to try to figure out more closely what is wrong with it. So, "To heck with it," I said and moved it off the stand and on to the floor where it will remain for the time being as a big send-only FAX machine.

In the menagerie of office electronics that we moved up I have three more printers ranging from another inkjet printer of the same vintage, a newer photo printer, and a color laser that I was using at the church until I moved the computer that I had there back into the house. I took the oldest one, an HP DeskJet 970Cse, and used that as a replacement. I took an Epson scanner that I hadn't used much since moving up here and hooked it up as well. In the end we have mostly everything that the MFD did. We are missing the FAX functions. I guess my laptop, which has a fax/modem, will be used to receive faxes if the occasion ever arises.

We'll see how long this new arrangement hold up. The process of copying documents is now a bit more convoluted because it requires going through the computer. If things don't work well, at least MFD prices have come down considerably since the G85 days. I even found a relatively inexpensive one that connects directly to the network so that it doesn't need a PC at all.

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