Although normal printers and scanners are still quite popular among home users, things are quite different in the home office or small office segment, where the users tend to opt for more advanced solutions, which provide both printing and scanning capabilities at relatively low costs. And that's exactly the reason why the Canon company has just announced its imageCLASS MF4270 model, a laser multifunction printer (MFP) that offers its users both high speed monochrome printing and reasonably fast scanning capabilities.

According to the company, the imageCLASS MF4270 is one of the company's smallest multifunction units, but it's capable of accomplishing great things. Thus, it can print duplex output directly from a PC, as well as duplex print incoming faxes and copying letter-sized documents, thus helping users to reduce the level of paper consumption. Moreover, the peripheral provides quite a high level of efficiency, as its 35-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) allows the device to copy single-sided documents and output double-sided page, not to mention the fact that the MF4270 prints at speeds up to 21 pages-per-minute (ppm) for letter-sized output, at 1200 x 600 dpi resolution.

Canon's imageCLASS MF4270 provides some interesting scanning capabilities as well, since it's capable of capturing scans in 24-bit color at an interpolated resolution of up to 9600 dpi through its automatic document feeder (ADF) or platen glass. Moreover, the imageCLASS MF4270 MFP also incorporates a pretty serious fax solution, as it features eight one-touch speed dial numbers, 100 coded speed dial numbers, 256-page memory capacity, PC Faxing and two-sided duplex output.

The imageCLASS MF4270 uses 33.6 Kbps Super G3 fax technology for the rapid transmission of facsimile communications, but has also been fitted with a USB 2.0 interface and also supports network connectivity via its 10/100Base T network adapter.

"Canon has made vast improvements with our line of small and home office MFPs, squeezing more functionality into smaller MFP designs," said Jim Rosetta, vice president and general manager, Imaging Systems Group, Canon U.S.A. "The imageCLASS MF4270 stands as one more example of Canon bringing big business capabilities to the desktop."

Canon's new imageCLASS MF4270 has a suggested retail price of around 299 US dollars and the first units will be rolled out the factory doors starting with September, which means that they'll actually hit the shelves by the beginning of October.

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