Brother MFC-5440-CN Scanner/Printer/Fax

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Brother MFC-5440-CN Scanner/Printer/Fax

Postby Luckyboy1 on Wed Jan 18, 2006 12:11 pm

Let me start by saying that I learned a long time ago to hate Brother equipment as being the cheapest and easiest to break garbage out there. Tech support has traditionally been nonexistent in spite of all their advertising. So I was not pleased at all to find out that when I started a new job, that I was left with Brother as my only affordable choice. My employer uses an obscure program called Paper Port and all scans sent to them must be in this format. If you buy a Brother machine, it comes with the Paper Port program in it. If not, it's a $100.00 program. Why don't they use a readily available format for their scans? Who knows!

Anyways, I go down to the Office Depot store and looked at some other vendors as well. For the model in question, it was on sale at Office Depot for $164.00. I've learned over time that this is NOT the time to buy at Office Depot. Any units that don't sell at the end of the sale period are put on clearance at a lower price. But Luckyboy, they might sell out! Yes, this is true, but I doubt it and I got mine the day after the sale ended for $124.00!!!

The device is capable of 6000 X 1200 dots per inch which should be plenty good for most applications. However, to save on ink and to keep file size reasonable as well as making stuff print very fast, I'd suggest dummying it down considerably for every day use.

The neatest part of this design is that you can take an ethernet cable and connect it to your router and then the whole family will have access to it. This will cut down considerably on the need for printers everywhere and the space and supplies needed to maintain the system. The installation instructions say to install the drivers before connecting the ethernet cable and that is wrong. If you try and do this, the installation will hang because it's trying to communicate with Brother Company. Just install the ethernet cable first and the install should go just fine. Don't use the install disc. Get the latest drivers from Brother.

The document feeder works amazingly well and will feed paper reliably up to 25 pound weight. It even feeds thin stuff well without double feeding and I've fed stuff that's been folded etc. and it takes it without complaint.

Brother support is pretty good at answering the phone. Don't leave a message for them if they don't answer the phone. It took them a week to return my call and the best way to handle it is to just call back again. The technicians are pleasant and competent and like, speak Engligh and actually comprehend it as well.

For $124.00, this unit is a champ. Don't bother buying the Brother brand toner cartridges in black. Color may be a different issue. yes, it says it voids the warranty if you use aftermarket ink. However, if you get 5 cartridges of use out of the aftermarket stuff, you will have paid for the unti and they work well for me and I've used plenty of the black. I don't do much color work, so I can't tell you how well the aftermarket ones work with color.

Again, this review is not on something specific to gaming, but just about everyone has a printer and I fingered at least some would find the information useful.
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