Hollywood will never make a movie about a printer company. The tagline — You don't get to 500 million pages without creating a few empty cartridges — would not sell many tickets. Nonetheless, printers remain an important fixture in virtually all law offices. So when Epson pre-announced its WorkForce 840 All-in-One Printer to the media, we asked practicing lawyer and printer expert Sean Doherty to use it for a few weeks in his law practice. How fast can the WorkForce 840 print typical legal documents? How well can it copy, scan, and handle faxes? How easily can you connect to it via WiFi? How much noise does it make? In this TechnoFeature, Sean answers these and other questions about Epson's newest WorkForce inkjet multifunction printer.
TechnoScore: 3.75
1 = Lowest Possible Score; 5 = Highest Possible Score
Introduction
On January 5, 2011, Epson released the WorkForce 840 All-in-One Printer, a multifunction color inkjet printer for small businesses and workgroups. I got my hands on a production model last month before the announcement for this review.
The WorkForce 840 prints fast, one- and two-sided monochrome and color documents, plus it copies, scans and handles faxes at a street price of about $300 (expect that price to drop). The printer includes a WiFi interface, a 500-sheet input capacity in 2 paper trays, and a 30-page, two-sided automatic document feeder that overlooks an 8.5 x 12-inch flatbed scanner. The WorkForce 840 works with Macs and Windows PCs. I tested it using Windows XP and Windows 7.
Setting Up the Printer in My Home Law Office
I have a small home office that supports a private law practice licensed in California, New York, and Washington, D.C. I specialize in software compliance.
My law practice primarily deals with digital content that frequently requires me to scan and fax documents, and infrequently to print documents in monochrome and color. Using one unit to perform all these functions saves me space, time, and the expense of purchasing and maintaining separate products to accomplish the same work.
The WorkForce 840 has a small form factor. It measures 17.6 x 22.3 x 12.0 inches, and easily fits in my office. And, at 22 pounds (without media), I had no trouble finding just the right spot for it. Although the printer was quiet enough to operate close to my desk, and dead-quiet in sleep mode, which uses only 0.2 Watts of energy, I placed it in a work room and accessed it over my WiFi network. I placed the back of the unit close to a wall after attaching the power cord and telephone lines. One telephone line connected to the wall jack and another connected to a telephone or an answering machine.
Configuring the WiFi connection was a snap using the 7.8-inch control panel. The panel can rest along the face of the printer or tilt up to a 45-degree angle for walk-up operations. With the panel's 3.5-inch color touch-screen, I configured the unit to access my wireless router. Since my router does not broadcast its SSID, the printer could not find it when it surveyed the wireless space in and around my office. But I easily typed the SSID name and password for WiFi Protected Access security. Once done, the printer accessed my access point and received an IP address via DHCP.
Epson's printer software includes a handy option to find the printer when it is assigned an IP address via DHCP as opposed to configuring the printer with a static IP address. Rather than using the IP address to advertise the printer's availability on the network, Epson's printer software queries the network for the WorkForce 840 by its MAC address.
When I reset my access point, which forced the printer to receive a new IP address, my computers had no trouble finding the printer to fax, print, and scan from desktops.
When I disabled the wireless connection and re-enabled it, however, I had to re-enter the configuration for my access point. The printer should save my wireless configuration for reuse. Also, the wireless interface was not persistent in its connection with my access point. When the unit went into power-off mode it would not accept print jobs over the network until I walked up to the unit and woke it by touching the console.
A Clever Design
Once positioned, I never had to move the WorkForce 840. The paper trays eject from the front of the unit, while the Ethernet and USB interfaces reside on the left side of the printer. Air cools the device from the sides. I also noticed that the duplex engine does not protrude from the back of the printer. The engine and rollers are built into the unit, which results in a shorter paper path and speedier two-sided printing (see below for my speed tests).
Despite its petite size, the printer packs in 500 sheets of 8.5 x 11-inch paper in two paper trays. When focused on filing a brief, which required numerous drafts and originals, I set the software to use tray 1 first, then tray 2 without interruption. Otherwise, the first tray holds a variety of paper from 4 x 6-inch photo paper to legal size (8.5 x 14-inch). Tray 2 holds either letter- or legal-size paper.
Image capture and fax transmission are important considerations for me and many of you I suspect. I still have clients that prefer facsimiles to email for security.
The WorkForce 840 provides standalone one- and two-sided fax operation, in black-and-white and color, from the console and the capability to fax documents directly from my office computers. I scanned one- and two-sided documents from the 840 and from my computers in scan-to-folder and scan-to-email operations. From the console, I also scanned documents to USB memory devices that attach to the front of the printer.
These functions all work well. However, I discovered some shortcomings. For example, although I could view and print photos directly from memory cards and USB devices attached to the WorkForce 840, I could not print documents directly from such devices. Also, the printer cannot print duplex on legal-size paper.
Epson includes Epson Easy Photo Print, Epson Scan, and ABBYY FineReader software, but neglects to include a USB cable (most printers don't include a cable).
Speed Testing Typical Law Firm Print Jobs
Although speed is not my primary consideration in inkjet printing, the WorkForce 840 has exceptional speed in printing 8.5 x 11-inch documents in black and white and color using normal (not draft) print settings.
For example, the WorkForce 840 printed 15 one-sided (simplex) ISO pages per minute (ppm) in black-and-white and 9 to 10 ppm in color. For two-sided (duplex) printing, the WorkForce 840 output over 7 ppm in black-and-white and over 5 ppm in color. These numbers, however, mean little to my law practice.
Using the same print settings as above, I took a 30-page document with an average of 490 words per page in Times New Roman 12-point font with one-inch top and bottom margins and 1.25-inch left and right margins and sent it to the WorkForce 840. After the first page of the print job (first page out), the WorkForce 840 dispatched the rest of the job at a pace of 16 ppm.
Even better was the printer's speed in accomplishing two-sided output, which is dog-slow on most inkjet printers because the ink has to dry on one side before printing the other side. After the first page out, the WorkForce 840 printed 8 two-sided pages (4 sheets) per minute.
I also printed an informational pamphlet in PDF format that I use in my office. After the first page out, the job proceeded at 3 ppm in simplex mode and 1.5 ppm (3 sheets) in duplex mode. That's not blazing color speed, but good enough for my needs.
Conclusion
The WorkForce 840 satisfies all my image capture, transmission, and printing requirements in a speedy fashion. I found it easy to configure and operate thanks to its 7.8-inch touch-panel. The printer fits easily into my office space thanks to its small form factor, and is accessible via WiFi from all my office computers. I think fellow lawyers would agree with my assessment — and my TechnoScore of 3.75 out of 5.
Sean Doherty is the technology editor for Law Technology News, and a San Francisco-based attorney.
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