VA dispatches digital copiers
- By Dan Carney
- Jul 24, 2000
To reduce the amount of equipment that telecommuters have to lug home and
maintain, the Department of Veterans Affairs is issuing home office-class
multifunction printers from Hewlett-Packard Co. to employees who work from
home.
"They are economical and small in size, and they allow us to provide
multiple functions," said Charles DeSanno, chief information officer for
the VA's medical centers in New York and New Jersey. Most telecommuters
run basic Microsoft Corp. Office applications and use a free Web-based electronic
fax service, he said.
"The [HP] OfficeJet has been quite reliable," said DeSanno. "The only
knock against it is that it takes ink jet cartridges, which cost more than
laser jet cartridges. But it is fine if you don't do much printing. It is
also useful as a scanner."
The agency is also looking at using a departmental-class digital copier
as a network printing device, but is proceeding cautiously. "We are really
just getting started with digital copiers," DeSanno said. "We don't view
them as being as fast as networked laser printers, but we may be proven
wrong. And copier machines tend to break down more than laser printers."
But DeSanno's team is testing a Xerox Corp. digital copier on their
network with open minds. "We are going to go with whatever is the most efficient,
has the most uptime and that we don't have to baby-sit, even if it costs
a little more," he said.