BIOS: Technology Means Business

If you need a single document capture and printing device for your workgroup or distributed environment, HP's LaserJet 4345mfp series should be at the top of your list. Not only does this outstanding all-in-one printer come with a monochrome laser print engine, colour flatbed scanner, monochrome copier and fax capabilities, but there's also two excellent software options (Digital Sending Software 4.0 and AutoStore) that allow workgroups to easily capture documents, extract relevant data, index the documents, and distribute them to multiple destinations (including fax, e-mail, shared network folders, directories, and content management systems) - all from a single device. No-one can touch HP when it comes to networkable digital senders.

Pros: Excellent networking tools; hard disk; lots of finishing options
Cons: Mono printing, copying and faxing; no delayed fax sending

The LaserJet 4345mfp series is all about increasing productivity for demanding workgroups. It delivers this in droves by combining high quality print, copy, scan, fax, document finishing and digital sending (scan to e-mail, send to folder, authentication, send to LAN fax, send to printer, or even send to an application) capabilities in one exceptionally easy-to-use device. Its price will likely rule it out for small businesses, but larger companies will greatly appreciate its relatively fast print speeds, flexible model configurations and best-in-class networking tools.

The unit (762x483x545mm, 53.5kg) offers black-and-white printing, black-and-white copying, colour scan to e-mail, monochrome faxing and digital sending. It comes with plenty of power under the hood too, including 256MB of DDR SDRAM (upgradable to 512MB) and a powerful 533MHz processor to help perform complex tasks quickly - HP claims print and colour scanning speeds of up to 45ppm and copy speeds of up to 45cpm with a first-copy-out time of less than 10 seconds from the 600x600dpi print engine (up to 1200x1200dpi equivalent using HP's FastRes 1200 software emulation).

There's also a 20GB embedded hard disk for digital sending, private printing, and job storage, and the easy-to-use touch-screen control panel with 10-key number pad provides a high degree of walk-up functional access - you don't need to be a computer geek to get the best from the LaserJet 4345mfp.

Paper handling is also impressive. Unlike desktop all-in-one printers which tend to offer basic input and output options, the LaserJet 4345mfp comes as standard with a 600-sheet A4 paper capacity (expandable to 2100 sheets) and a 50-sheet Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) for automatically scanning, faxing and copying two-sided documents. It also has a massive recommended monthly duty cycle of up to 200,000 pages, which should be more than enough for even the highest productivity workgroups, and there's an optional 75-sheet envelope feeder.

Another key strength of the LaserJet 4345mfp is its 500-sheet output tray - other products tend to offer a capacity of just 150 or 250 sheets. You can also staple up to 30 pages and stack up to 500-sheets with the optional stacker/stapler, or use the optional 3-bin mailbox to separate print, copy and fax functions, assign user mailboxes or stack up to 700 pages in one 500-sheet output tray and two 100-sheet output trays. The 100-sheet multipurpose tray even handles heavy custom media up to 200gsm, including paper (plain, pre-printed, letterhead, pre-punched, bond, recycled, colour, rough), transparencies, labels, envelopes and card stock.

The touch-screen graphical control panel is easy to use and provides excellent device interaction. As well as the usual range of setup features accessible from a front panel, you can monitor job status, troubleshoot and access core functions such as photocopying, scanning and faxing. Advanced job retention features can also be accessed from the panel, thanks to the embedded 20GB hard disk. For instance, there's the ability to print and review the first copy of a job (Proof and Hold). After all copies are printed, the Proof and Hold job is deleted from the machine, helping to reduce network traffic, paper waste and supply costs.

Private printing (virtual mailbox) helps you to protect confidential documents by allowing you to hold a job for printing until it is released using a 4-digit Personal Identification Number (PIN) at the control panel, and Quick Copy prints the requested number of copies of a job and stores a copy of the job on the machine's hard disk. Additional copies of the job can be printed later, directly from the control panel. Lastly, Stored Job lets you download a print job to the machine without printing it. You can then print the job at any time from the control panel.

Similar to all of HP's business products, the LaserJet 4345mfp is designed to fit seamlessly into your network. It therefore comes as standard with the company's Jetdirect Fast Ethernet embedded print server that provides 10/100Mbit/s throughput speeds and security tools. Of course, a network printer wouldn't be complete without HP's Web Jetadmin, a Web-based peripheral management utility for remotely installing, configuring and managing a wide variety of HP and non-HP network peripherals.

The built-in embedded Web server permits one-to-one device management and performs remote diagnostics, sends e-mail alerts, and provides job tracking and accounting. It allows you to view status information, set tray loads and configurations, set network configurations, view and print internal pages and receive status notifications without having to be at the control panel. HP's networking tools are miles ahead of the competition in terms of both features and support.

Client operating systems supported include Microsoft's Windows 98, ME, NT 4.0 (parallel and network connections only), 2000, XP and Server 200, as well as Apple's Mac OS 9.x and later, OS X v 10.1 or later. Compatible print languages include HP's PCL 6 and PCL 5e, PostScript Level 3 emulation, direct PDF printing (v 1.3), and XHTML-Print v0.95 PML (Printer Management Language).