The Xerox WorkCentre XE90fx offers a cost-effective way to combine a mainstream laser printer, fax machine, copier, and document scanner into a single space-conscious unit. This multifunction model is an excellent choice if you are a small-office user who needs a walk-up fax and copy machine, as well as a laser printer.

The XE90fx features a laser printer engine with a straight-through paper path from back to front, and a flatbed copier with an automatic document feeder mounted on top. In this design, input pages feed in separately at a right angle to the output sheets, helping to speed up performance. The document feeder handles up to 50 sheets and the paper source holds 250 pages. We found the dual paper paths quite reliable and didn't experience a single jam during our testing.

There are two separate control panels on the XE90fx. On the top of the unit are a traditional fax keypad, 20 one-touch dial buttons, and an LCD panel that displays status and setup prompts. To change the machine's options, you scroll through the LCD menus using scroll buttons. On the lower front of the unit is the printer/copier control panel. This panel features start and stop buttons, zoom controls to adjust from 50 to 200 percent, and an LED display that shows the number of copies.

Our testing yielded six copies per minute and over seven pages per minute of 600 dpi printing--both very respectable speeds for this class. We were able to feed nine pages per minute for fax transmission using the machine's fax-from-memory feature. We liked the generous 50-page document feature but found the output tray, also rated at 50 pages, a bit shallow for that number of pages. The only significant limitation of this model is its inability to scan in color.

Along with the printer driver and TWAIN-compatible scanner driver, the XE90fx comes with Xerox TextBridge Pro 8.0 optical character recognition software. Although this Xerox offering doesn't provide for scanning color images, it meets standard business needs well.

Pros:

• Scans bound documents as well as sheets
• Generous document feeder
• Copies/faxes without PC

Cons:

• Doesn't scan in color