Salutation is also a key factor in providing ease of use. Today's multifunction devices are a complex integration of scanner, copier, printer, and fax devices with an information access terminal. Each vendor has approached the user interface from a different prospective. Some have large displays with on-screen buttons, others have physical buttons and small displays.
Some displays are in color, some support graphics.
The process for an end user to log on to the network, access information and have it printed on the device or distributed to colleagues can be a daunting task on any device. Performing these tasks on a device you have never operated is even more challenging. Salutation's capability discovery, coupled with smart card technology, can simplify the use of networked appliances. Unlike traditional mag-stripe credit cards, which can hold a few hundred characters of information, a smart card will hold 64 thousand characters. With smart card, a knowledge worker simply plugs the smart card into a reader on the device and begins to access information.