Equipment and gizmos enliven modern offices

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?