Office Equipment
Marathon Office Interiors: The Walkstation
Product Description: The Walkstation is the fully integrated combination of an electric height-adjustable work surface with an exclusively engineered, low-speed commercial-grade treadmill.
Special Features: The treadmill goes a maximum of 2 mph, a speed that makes multitasking possible. The Walkstation isn’t meant to be a cardiovascular workout. Instead, it’s meant to get employees moving around, which may help lower blood pressure and cholesterol. The walk station is fully adjustable, extending 24 to 52 inches from the floor. It also calculates distance walked and calories burned.
Comments: “It does bring the focus on the employees’ health,” said Frank Sovich, owner of Marathon Office Interiors. “And a healthy workforce leads to increased productivity.”
Price: $3,500
Smart Business Products: Embody
Product Description: After seven years of drafting and tweaking the design, Herman Miller created the Embody, an office chair whose inspiration is the human spine and is meant adapt to the user’s spine curvature. The back is narrow, allowing for natural back and forth arm movement. Herman Miller researched body movement and blood flow when engineering the chair. The idea for the chair came about when Bill Strumpf, a designer for Herman Miller, was in Europe sleeping on a mattress supported by springs, paving the way for the Embody seat pan which is supported by a series of plastic springs, not foam.
Special Features: Coming in 13 different colors, Embody’s three layered pixilated seat construction aids in the even distribution of weight. Embody is made from 45 percent recycled content and is 96 percent recyclable, according to Herman Miller.
Comments: “Herman Miller is a very green company,” said Bill Schuette, owner at Smart Business Products. “They’re so far ahead of the curve for the green manufacturing process. They’ve been doing green since the 1950s.”
Price: $1,200-$1,500
Image Technologies of Missouri: Muratec MFX-2050
Product Description: The MFX-2050 enables network printing and scanning, as well as digital document delivery to e-mail addresses, PC folders, fax terminals and color printers.
Special Features: The multi-function machine has a large touch screen interface. Default screens can be personalized to provide one-touch access to the features used most often. The machine has Ethernet connectivity that allows it to be shared by multiple workgroup users. The MFX-2050 also has fax server integration and an 80-sheet automatic document feeder than enables copying or scanning of large jobs without having to split them in multiple sets.
Comments: This is the machine that Image Technologies employees use for their own office needs. Co-owner Steve Baumgartner said they scan all of their work orders and other documents and send them to computer files that are automatically backed up more than twice. They now have the beginnings of a graveyard for metal filing cabinets in the back room, because they are shredding all of the paper files once they are scanned and stored digitally. “It’s also a cheap man’s color copier,” Baumgartner said.
Price: $3,495