Customer Reviews

Xerox WorkCentre PE120 - multifunction ( B/W ) ( PE120 )

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This unit works very well, although there are some quirks. As delivered from the factory, the underside of the copy glass was dirty and smeared. As a favor, they sent a technician to clean it. The unit must be completely disassembled to access the bottom of the glass, so a do it yourself on this is not recommended.

The printer function works as expected and the copy and fax functions work well, too. Especially handy is the automatic document feeder which can be used to produce collated multipage copies in whatever number you may wish.

The fax/answer mode with a telephone/answering machine attached differentiates between voice messages and faxes very well, so a single line can be used for both voice and fax. However, here comes the first quirk: If you are using the telephone, all other functions on the machine (print, copy, scan) become unusable; even though the user manual claims that the machine is a multifunction unit. You can however use a different phone the same phone line as long as it's not the one connected to the machine; and the other functions work as they're supposed to. Xerox says this is normal.

The other quirk is that the scanner will not scan legal sized (8.5" x 14") pages unless you do it through PaperPort (supplied) or another image processing program like Photoshop. Any attempts to scan a legal sized page to memory outside of an image manipulation software will result in a letter sized (8.5" x 11") image that has 3" missing from the original. Xerox acknowledges that this is a nrmal function of the machine. P.S. The scanner glass is only 8.5" x 11", so legal sized documents must be scanned through the ADF.

While this unit can Scan to the PC direct from it's own control panel, there is no control of the image functions; so it is best to use PaperPort from the computer to control the scan process.

The OmniPage SE character recognition software, while not used a lot yet, appears to work pretty well.

I've found the Xerox US based telephone support people to be extremely helpful; and they do call back if they need to find an answer to a question they don't know. It's very refreshing to find non-overseas based support.

Now that I know how to work with the few quirks, I'm very pleased with this unit.

I've used this machine extensively in a doctor's office, and it worked well for quite some time, despite difficulty getting started. Recently though, it has been plagued by problems, most specifically phantom paper jams which don't actually exist but cause the whole thing to stop working. I've had to take it in for repairs at least three times, but have owned it for only about a year. Also, it sometimes refuses to recognize the toner cartridge, also causing a complete breakdown of function. If you want a reliable machine, I suggest you look somewhere else!

We had a PE120 where I work for a couple of years. As the reviews by DUTCH and hermionegrangerfan are spot on, I won't repeat what they had to say. I would say our machine would be a medium-use primarily-fax machine with perhaps a dozen faxes per day. Although once per quarter I'll pound it with 100+ individual faxes. And this is where I've wanted to go all Office Space on the beast.

You see, in order to input a fax number, it wants to warm up. This takes about 5 seconds, and those of the office staff who aren't used to this will usually end up with a partial number if they aren't paying attention. (It also wants to warm up to print, even though it claims to have done so a mere minute before.) To input another fax number, you have to wait for the machine to display its progress on the LCD display, which is annoying. If you're entering a number when it decides to print, it interrupts you to announce its intentions, although the keystroke beeps continue.

And the beast is quite noisy: the cooling fans stay on for quite a while after printing, which is preceded by a sound akin to a small jet warming up.

We now have a Brother MFC-8860DN and love it.