THE term “paperless office” has been bandied about since the mid-1970s, when personal computing began to inform daily life and futurists saw a work environment in the none-too-distant future where documents and transactions could be rendered and accomplished digitally.
Such future seemed even more inevitable as the Internet took hold of the global community in the 1990s and made all kinds of communication—personal or professional, long distance or otherwise—nearly instantaneous with e-mail and other electronic messaging formats.
The advent of so-called cloud services and social media in recent years has made it seem that not only is a paperless office about to come to pass but even a paperless world.
Whether such world comes sooner rather than later, global companies whose businesses have been fueled by consumers’ consumption of paper have expertly retooled their models in anticipation of this seeming inevitability.
Canon—the multinational corporation headquartered in Õta, Tokyo, Japan, which has been supplying the imaging and optical products needs of consumers, industries and professions since the 1930s—is one such company.
It has given its range of point-and-shoot and professional-grade digital cameras (under the IXUS, PowerShot and EOS brands) wireless capabilities that address the seemingly insatiable need of consumers to share all kinds of visual snippets of their everyday lives to a worldwide community through a variety of social-media platforms.
For its comprehensive portfolio of printers, Canon has also pushed functionality beyond their original utility. These modern tools for the home and office no longer just print documents and photos, but also even receive for printing the latest snaps you made on your smartphone or digital shooter, or some clever story you came across while browsing the Web on your tablet.
One of these multifunction goodies from Canon is the Pixma MG3570, a competitively priced all-in-one wireless inkjet printer (print/scan/copy) that is available in either a stylish matte black finish or the glossier red or white.
Beyond its good looks, however, this versatile performer makes for an indispensable tool for the home or the small home/office with the various technologies it packs. The Pixma MG3570 is equipped with the company’s unique FINE (Full Photo-Lithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering) technology print head that yields high-quality prints of up to 4,800×1,200 dpi for grain-free images in the most perfect shades.
And for those documents or books that you just had to have scanned and printed out, the Pixma MG3570 features a four-color ink system with dedicated pigment-based black ink for black-and-white document printing—which essentially means greatly improved text printing while the typical problems of smearing when using a highlighter is substantially reduced.
Also packing built-in Wi-Fi connectivity that supports 802.11b/g/n standard, this all-in-one tool boasts of printing function sharing among multiple computers or devices over a high-speed wireless network, allowing you direct access to these functions straight from either your smartphone, your significant other’s desktop computer, or your teen’s tablet. Yes, the Pixma MG3570 also boasts of support for Google Cloud Print and AirPrint, allowing you to easily create printouts of photos (even borderless prints), e-mail and Web pages, without installing any device driver, straight from your compatible Android or iOS smartphone or tablet.
And just in case you’ve been through one nightmare setup process too many, rest assured that setting up this Pixma for such functionality is easily accomplished in just a few steps that even first-time printer owners will find easy.
You can further leverage the MG3570’s strengths via the Pixma Printing Solutions smartphone applications for photo printing and scanning, and the My Image Garden software for automatic-printing idea suggestions and face-detection function for photo management. These days, much of the focus of the tech media is on mobile and wearable technologies like smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and smartglasses, with tools like printers and scanners now increasingly becoming nothing more than footnotes and boxed items on the pages of newspapers and magazines.
Despite this challenge, Canon has flourished by making its technologies continuously relevant even as the world marches steadily toward a paperless future.