Dell printers are rebadged Lexmark's - I think it's been mentioned before, but thought I would mention it again. Dunno if the Dell's have all of what I am going to talk about below - might be a disadvantage of getting them from Dell since Dell does ship different drivers.
Lexmark is very strong on security - all firmware updates are signed, they can utilize smart cards for authentication (i.e. have printer hold job until user authenticates to printer with smartcard or PIN and then print while user is standing there for sensitive documents), if a printer has a hard drive for caching of jobs it's encrypted, etc. Lexmark has been, so far, the only vendor to also provide me a whitepaper explaining why having one of their multifunction machines with a fax modem on my network is not a risk. It's quite detailed and specific. I had been trying for years to get such a whitepaper from HP, Canon and other vendors and had come up with nothing. One mention to our Lexmark rep and I had a whitepaper within 24 hours. As an aside, if your vender supports PS Fax, I wouldn't have the printer plugged into my network and the phone at the same time... Heck, it's a 260K PDF - if anyone is interested in it send me an email off list and I'll forward you a copy. The only issues we have had with some Lexmark printers is they have been fussy on paper, and most of that has been from users not paying attention to the printers specs and requirements. A few we have had to have replaced, but they have been pretty responsive in working with us. In my immediate office we ordered a scanner/printer combo and replaced our photocopier. I hesitate to call it an all-in one since the scanner is separate from the printer, although it comes with a stand that integrates the two. The entire cost of the scanner/printer setup was less then maintenance for one year on the photocopier - and it even staples! Bigger printers also collate and bind, just like larger photocopiers. The scanner supports emailing a PDF - I use that feature all the time to capture documents electronically and when duplex scanning, it scans both sides of the paper at the same time. Also, every one of their scanners is color - even though I ordered it as a kit with a B&W printer. If I need a color copier, all I have to do is order a Lexmark color printer and now I have a color copier and B&W copier from the same scanner (pretty slick!). the scanner has a touchscreen interface - there is a complete SDK available, so if I was so inclined (and actually had a developer) I could integrate the scanner directly into a workflow with our Lotus Note or Sharepoint servers. I'm pretty happy with our Lexmarks. Oh, they have a true universal driver and it doesn't litter your system tray and hard drive with gobs of utilities either. Much friendlier in a networked printing environment... Eric Eskam =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The contents of this message are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government "The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it." - P. B. Medawar ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
