If you're setting up a home office, you'll probably want a printer and fax machine and maybe a scanner and a copier. You could spend between $700 and $1,500 to buy all four, then enjoy the challenge of finding the space to set them up near your PC. Or you could spend between $400 and $700 for one multi-function device.

Until recently, I had trouble recommending these machines, because the manufacturers generally made too many compromises with at least one of the functions. That's still a danger. But as the market for these devices has grown, the offerings have matured. Today, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Brother, Sharp, Panasonic, Toshiba and other companies make multi-function devices with reasonably good performance in each category.

Another issue to consider is what happens if something goes wrong. If your stand-alone scanner or fax machine breaks, you can still print. But if any component goes down on a multi-function machine, the whole system may be unusable until the machine is fixed.