Epson WorkForce 600 multifunction printer

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Price: $199.99

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Description: It's an ink-jet printer. It's a scanner. It's a copier. It's a fax machine. It prints color photos. And it's under $200. That makes it perfect for any home office.

The Workforce 600 is a black, compact, lightweight (18 pounds) machine that can fit nicely into your home office no matter how cramped your space might be. The printer comes with a variety of connectivity options – it has slots for memory cards, Ethernet cables, phone jacks, USB ports. And it can also connect over Wi-Fi.

This gives you several options for taking documents that are on your computer and printing them, or going the other way and taking documents stored on a memory card and, say, converting them to a PDF. You can print envelopes, documents, spreadsheets, presentation materials and even create greeting cards.

Upsides: Setup is easy. The user interface is clear. The software lets you handle a variety of tasks from your PC. One key test of a multifunction printer is how well it prints photos, and this one does a nice job.

Downsides: If you're accustomed to a heavy-duty office printer and want to run off a bunch of copies and have the pages collated, this machine can't do it. In addition, if you want to switch from printing different sizes of paper, you can't do it by changing a setting electronically, you have to physically move a little plastic holder that keeps the pages in place. But aside from those minor quibbles, this device does it all.

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