I need to get a multi function printer/scanner/copier/fax. However there is a requirement to which one is purchased.

The machine will be installed to the network via ethernet, and will not be connected directly to any one PC. The machine will need to be able to be installed AS A SCANNER on each Windows 7x64 machine.

Now the problem I have run into (if you can even find the fine print to explain these details) is that the MFC machines from (for example) HP will do what I call pseudo network scanning. This means you set a shared folder on your PC, and you point the scanner to that shared folder. Then scans you do from the scanner go to the shared folder on that PC. The reason this doesn't work is because the PCs run some custom software that has a feature to scan a document and integrate the resulting scan into the software (it is a CMS application). So for that functionality to work, the scanner needs to actually be installed in Windows as a hardware device. The way the HP stuff works is the PC never has any actual knowledge of the scanner, the scanner has the knowledge of the shared folder to dump scans in. My issue make sense now?

The way things are being done now are to do manual scans with this "pseudo" network scanning method, then renaming the resulting file, then dumping it into the CMS. Versus the method that we are trying to accomplish, which would be from the CMS software you select "Scan Document" and it scans it from the network, names it what it is supposed to, and attaches it automatically to the correct place in the CMS.