Canon ScanFront Office Thinger

While an all-in-one printer and scanner combo would almost certainly be a better solution for most home offices, there is an inscrutable appeal to these new "ScanFront" units from Canon. It's not their looks—they look like throwbacks to the early '90s. It's not their functionality, per se—I can already scan in documents and email them or FTP them, even if I have to use a real, live computer as intermediary. It's not the price—two large and up.

I just can't put my finger on why I think these are cool. I think it might be that they are sort of anachronistic, a modern reinterpretation of an idea already past its prime, like a nuclear-powered fax machine.

Canon's ScanFront 220 / 220P begins shipping [Engadget]