MFP, for the uninitiated, stands for Multifunction printer. It's one of those thingymabobs that is a printer, a scanner, a copier and sometimes a FAX machine. I have one at home, a USB more, and it's pretty convenient.

I've seen WiFi enabled ones on the market now. The marketing pitch: no cables! We are all laptop people these days, so you can send your print jobs to the next room wirelessly, and you can scan wirelessly as well (wow!)

Well OK, no cables is all good and nice (after all I do have a wireless mouse and keyboard), but how convenient is it? If you never (or almost never) scan, then it's somewhat convenient, especially if you've got lots of users in the house.

If you have to scan a lot on the other hand, it's not convenient at all! You have to get up each time you want to change the image. If you are scanning a magazine or book page you need to be next to the unit anyway to hold the lid down. On top of that WiFi speeds for scanning aren't comparable to USB 2 or firewire (from what I hear).

So why have an MFP that's wireless? Why not just have a wireless printer?