Equipment and gizmos enliven modern offices

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): So you run an office? A modern one, supposedly. You have employees who report to work at 9 in the morning and leave at 5 in the afternoon. What do they use to do their jobs during those eight hours?

In this digital era, we can expect that most of them need some kind of electronic equipment to work with.

One or two may still use the old clinkety-clank manual typewriter -- nobody called it manual in the 1970s -- for typing out receipts and short memos.

Some may be using electric or electronic typewriters. Others may already be using PCs and notebooks, for sure.

What is the latest in office equipment?

Not much innovation, here, we have to admit up front. Still it is worth looking around to see what the big names in office equipment have to offer.

Some of your staff will be using the copier, scanner, printer and fax machines. The copier can be a plain old photocopying machine or a digital one. A digital copying machine will store the image of the original in its memory, so that you can make multiple copies without having the machine scan the source document again each time.

Sharp, one of the makers of digital copiers, calls this feature "SOPM", which stands for "scan once print many".

If you are shrewd enough, you may have bought a multifunction fax machine, which combines the functions of a scanner, a printer and a fax machine into one single piece of office equipment -- thereby saving a lot of space. They may save some cash, too, as they cost less than the combined price of three separate machines.

Multifunction fax machines like this are available from Brother, Hewlett-Packard, Canon and others. Some of them use inkjet printing technology, others use laser.

For example, let us take a look at Brother's US$524.99 (street price) inkjet color printer flatbed copier and scanner, fax and video capture multifunction machine, the MFC9200C. It has a built-in 14.4 kbps modem for sending and receiving faxes, large 8MB memory for broadcasting, out-of-paper reception and dual access, plus a 50-page auto document feeder (20lb) for unattended operation.

It is also capable of Capture digital photos from your digital camera at high resolution for photo quality printing. You want more capabilities? What about printing color video frames from your VCR, camcorder, or digital camera?

This machine can perform all of these actions without the help of a PC, although it can always be connected to one and you can broadcast faxes right from your PC.

Calculators

For sure, you will also need calculators. Depending on what they do, your staff may need the basic, financial or mathematical calculators.

They may also need calculators that can print numbers in color, as well, and these are now available. Apart from that, as calculators have been around longer than the personal computers, there has been hardly any innovation in this area. Some of the big names in calculators are Canon, Casio, HP, Sharp and Texas Instruments.

Telephone sets are certainly an absolute must in every office. You may choose between single-line and multi-line phone sets.

Some of the most popular brands in cordless phones are Panasonic, Sony, Sanyo and GE. At any rate, wireless is the way to go these days. For better freedom, headsets should be used, so your staff can keep on typing or moving around in the office while receiving important phone calls.

Phone makers such as Panaphone and GE now sell cordless headsets, as well, although their products suit the home rather than the office environment.

You can also toss out your old Walkman-sized cassette recorders, as well. Today people use digital voice recorders to record meetings, dictation, ideas that they do not want to disappear just like that. Some of the big names are, of course, Olympus, Sanyo, Panasonic, Sony and Samsung.

Sony has models that use the company's own memory sticks, and this will allow you to make voice recording for hours as long as you have blank memory sticks. Sony also makes versatile recorders that store the audio data in minidisks as well.

The good thing about digital recorders is that you can transfer the sound file to your PC and manipulate it, store it, archive it or transcribe it more easily than if you were to use an ordinary cassette recorder.

If your business also involves receiving payments in foreign currencies, what would your main worry be?

Definitely counterfeit money, and here in Indonesia the problem is real. Datascrip (www.datascrip.com) has four different types of versatile counterfeit-money detectors that will tell fake from the real McCoy. Datascrip also provides solutions for electronic filing to tackle the growing heaps of paper documents in your office that are getting out of control.

By the way, what is that in your pocket?

Is it a Cross Townsend Midnight Blue Laquer ballpoint? You deserve it. But, do you know that Cross (www.cross.com) also makes digital pens as well?

In fact, Cross has collaborated with IBM in developing a number of products, including the CrossPad. Now take a look at Cross Convergence, which is actually a scanner that can store as many as 300 Web addresses.

All you need to do is swipe the pen over a Web address that you see on the newspaper, magazine, product label, etc. and then upload the address to your PC using the included Optolink.

Once the address is already stored in your CRQ software (also included), you can go straight to the Web site.

Contract

Each time you need to sign a contract in style, you still can use the Cross Convergence that will tell other people who you really are.

Talking about pens that not only write, Sharper Image, the store with the most exotic products for curious minds (www.sharperimage.com), also sells a pen that can pick up FM radio broadcasts.

Its US$19.95 FM Pen will allow you to continue writing while keeping you updated with reports on traffic conditions or demonstrations on Jakarta's streets.

Still from Sharper Image is a pen that you can use to even write upside down. The US$34.95 Telescoping Fisher Space Pen is the right pen for you if you like writing on your ceiling.

Incidentally, is your office located near a street so that the noise of passing Bajaj (three-wheeled public transport vehicles) and those motorcycles with broken mufflers gets on your nerves?

Besides making your office building as soundproof as possible, there is not much else we can do about it, unfortunately.

But if your office is too quiet, your employees can fall asleep quickly.

Sharper Image offers Sound Soother that can produce up to 20 different soundscapes. The US$159 gadget provides audio background by simulating the sounds of the city, the rain, the Yosemite Falls, etc.

We must warn you that many of the above pieces of office equipment and gizmos may not be available here in this country. The US$89.99 Cross Convergence, on the other hand, is available only online, so you will have to order it through the Internet no matter where you are.

What other equipment do you need in your office? Except for the electronic whiteboard, presentation projector, binder and trimmer, labelmaker, paper shredder, air purifier and coffeemaker, your employees probably will not need much else.

Oh, by the way, come to think of it, do you know one particular piece of office equipment typically found in our government offices that you should seriously consider excluding from your list?

It's the TV set.

Unlike our government's offices, yours is a place for your staff to work and be productive. They are not there to watch Latin American soap operas, right?