Rating: 
Summary: Works Great, Easy to Install, Great Price, and OK Speed
Review: Recieved the MFC-5100C this afternoon from Amazon.com. Was worried that some of the reviews indicated some problems existed with installation. Happy to report that it works without a hitch on Windows 98. Came with a USB cable in the box, but have been using the parallel line so far. Will have to add a USB Hub to attach the printer using the USB line since it was not included in the box --- Didn't think they would include a Hub.Print quality is OK for home. Not on par with the latest/best inkjets, but at [this price] one can not complain, besides the best inkjets cannot do everything the 5100C can do. Scan quality is good as well. Again, not as good as more expensive scanners, but quite acceptable for an economical multifunction machine. Scanning speed is good as well. So far my only issue is that the scanner light stays on permanently, and there is no on/off switch for the unit. So the unit is presumably sucking power and wearing out the scanner light 24 hours a day. Which means it will break sooner than later. Hopefully Brother will read this review and add an on/off switch.
Rating:
Summary: Works well, great price, good MacOS X support
Review: I recieved the MFC-5100C this afternoon, with some trepidation about MacOS X support. I'm happy to report that it works without a hitch in OS X, both for printing and scanning. No USB cable in the box, but that seems to have become standard practice for printer manufacturers. Print quality is decent. Not on par with the latest/best inkjets, but they cost more than this machine, and don't have scanner/fax capabilities. And inkjet printing has come so far in the last few years that this 'ok' modern printer is far better than the standard a few years ago. Scan quality (via the TWAIN driver) is good as well. Again, not as good as more expensive scanners, but quite acceptable for an economical multifunction machine. Scanning speed is good as well. Minor gripe, that may not be Brother's fault - i can scan with no problems into Adobe Photoshop and some other apps, but Image Capture.app goes haywire with this TWAIN driver. Might be Apple's fault though, since the driver works fine with other apps. So far my only concern is that the scanner light stays on permanently, and there is no on/off switch for the unit. So the unit is presumably sucking power and wearing out the scanner light 24 hours a day. :( -robin
Rating: 
Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS PRINTER
Review: I bought this printer, every time the black ink runs out, I put in a new cartridge. Then it still says "Black Empty" and will not let you print. I had it into the shop twice already and could of bought a way better printer now for what I've spent. They replace the print head at $125 each time I replace a black cartrige. Plan to spend $125 + another $20 each time the black runs out.
Rating: 
Summary: Speeding along on the information highway
Review: Yesterday I would have given this MFC product **** stars, but Brother instantly resolved the installation issue I had (website contacted, e-mail response with great instructions, 100% functional within 5 minutes)-- now I'm back to *****. This one product replaces an older, slow HP inkjet printer and a very good but space-occupying scanner. We were faxing, printing and copying instantly and very pleased with the speed and quality of all three. The scanner was my problem. Have Windows 98. After installation, the win.ini file caused 'Twain device already in use" error message in the scanner when I tried to choose the Source file. I contacted the Brother website "Ask Us"/Software issues site by e-mail and the next day had the step-by-step instructions for resolving this. It works perfectly!! Scanned a document, even sent it off to Word, and it worked perfectly. I am very happy with this product. Haven't printed photos on photo-quality paper yet, but photocopied prints came out great on plain ol' white paper, so I'm hopeful! Saw it in the store, read the reviews here, bought it -- another satisfied customer!
Rating: 
Summary: Junk, but if you have it here is how to deal with it
Review: if you WANT to be able to just use black only you can put black electrical tape over your empty cartridges on the "front" of them. It's the part that faces you when the cartridges are in the machine and. Put the tape from the label (where it has the bend in the cartridge) up to close to the top and the laser that the machine uses will no longer detect an empty cartridge.
Rating:
Summary: Watch out for lemons!
Review: Given the positive reviews I've seen, I must have gotten a lemon. Had some minor print quality issues in the first year, solved with the surprisingly helpful tech support. Once the warranty expired, however, I've had one problem after another. First it stopped printing in black at all, requiring me to throw out a brand new cartridge and buy another new one to solve the problem. Both paper feeders (top document feed and back paper feeder) jam fully 80% of the time. Now goes through ink very quickly. Next time will spend a little more for a better quality machine.
Rating:
Summary: Great functionality with acceptable compromises
Review: 3.5 stars. I just picked up one of these Brother units almost on a whim, as the several that I played with in the stores were unacceptable with extremely poor print quality, for both text and graphics, color and B&W. I was worried that the description given by the one-star reviewer below was accurate. However, I gambled (well, not too much - the store has a 14 day return policy) that the demo units in the stores did not have anything close to the optimum settings, clean print heads or full ink cartridges. My gamble paid off, as the contrast between the well-used-if-not-abused store demos and my new machine is huge. First, as a frame of reference, I had an old HP Deskjet 500 (the original inkjet printer) and currently own a five year old HP Deskjet 712 I use for text printing, and a two year old Epson Stylus Photo 780 that I have yet to master and attempt to use for photo printing. I thought the 5100's set up and software install went about as quickly and well as I could expect - the directions were clear and simple, and I encountered absolutely no problems at all. I'm running Win 98SE, though, so I cannot comment on the complaints about XP compatibility. There are separate detailed instructions for XP installation but some of the scanning software (a third party's, not Brother's) may not be XP compatible. However, it does seem that Brother specifically addressed XP issues with the current models. It should be simple if you follow the directions exactly, rather than just diving in and mucking around. As far as text printing goes, this unit has average, acceptable quality for an inkjet printer. If one looks closely, the individual pixels are somewhat visible even at the best print quality. I would say its text quality is nearly identical to that on my Epson Photo 780 and similar to what a 300dpi laser printer from a decade ago produced. It's sufficient for business correspondence and probably just good enough for printing resumes, but it's not as crisp as the text printing from my HP 712. However, I have never seen any inkjet print better text than the 712, old as it may be, including the newest HP's I've seen in stores. If text quality is of paramount importance to you, no other inkjet printer brand on the market can compete with HP, so you should stick to that brand. The MFC-5100 is twice as fast at printing text as my HP 712. Copy quality is this unit's biggest shortcoming. It has pretty low resolution on the B&W setting, roughly what I got from my scanner printing out on the HP 712, or draft on the venerable HP Deskjet 500. It's debatable if the copy quality is sufficient to use for sending copies to other parties with business correspondence, but is ok for maintaining personal or home records. In the black and white mode, I see almost no difference in print quality between the Fast, Normal and Best copy quality settings, which may be a minor defect with my unit. It's pretty fast, though - prints in about 30-40 seconds from hitting the copy button, with subsequent copies coming much faster - figure five copies per minute in the real world beyond the first copy. Color copies are pretty nice and at a higher resolution than the monochrome ones. I haven't done any color printing of signs and such, but have printed some photos and have been quite pleased. I've managed to get a few excellent, highly detailed photos lately with my 2.1mp Canon A20 digital camera and they came out very nicely on the Brother, much better than anything I could print with my 600dpi HP 712. At 5" x 7" size, pixels were only noticeable at close inspection. Larger 8.5" x 11" photos had very similar resolution and beyond a distance of 18" appear to be as good as any enlargement I have seen from a 35mm autofocus camera. My Epson Photo 780 prints at a higher resolution (2880x720 - individual pixels are not noticeable even on close inspection of an 8.5" x 11" print) but has lousy, inaccurate color (at least as far as I've been able to tweak it). The MFC-5100C's color is vivid and very accurate and I prefer its photos to those from my Epson at this point. I'm not sure if I'm printing at the 5100's claimed 1200 x 2400 dpi highest resolution, though, as the settings don't allow for that specific of finetuning. The generally thorough manual is a bit lacking on photoprinting, but I think I've been using best photo settings. The individually replaceable cartridges (black, cyan, magenta and yellow) are also a nice feature and black cartridges are a third less expensive than HP cartridges. The fax function works perfectly and is as simple as anyone could want. The document feeder works like a charm, also. In summary, this is a pretty nice unit for the price and there is nothing in the market comparable until you spend 50% more. If this Brother only had print quality comparable to the HP units, I would give it an enthusiastic five stars. The HP 6110 is the cheapest HP multifunction flatbed with a document feeder, it does print noticeably better copies and text than this Brother, and appears, from what I saw in the stores, to have fewer compromises. In fact, despite the fact that the HP 6110 costs 62% more than I paid for the Brother, I liked its better print quality and faster fax enough that I ordered one, will compare it to the Brother MFC-5100 and update this review soon.
Rating:
Summary: Junk, but if you have it here is how to deal with it
Review: if you WANT to be able to just use black only you can put black electrical tape over your empty cartridges on the "front" of them. It's the part that faces you when the cartridges are in the machine and. Put the tape from the label (where it has the bend in the cartridge) up to close to the top and the laser that the machine uses will no longer detect an empty cartridge.
Rating:
Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS PRINTER
Review: I bought this printer, every time the black ink runs out, I put in a new cartridge. Then it still says "Black Empty" and will not let you print. I had it into the shop twice already and could of bought a way better printer now for what I've spent. They replace the print head at $125 each time I replace a black cartrige. Plan to spend $125 + another $20 each time the black runs out.
Rating:
Summary: If only I had read the Reviews
Review: If only I had read the reviews I would have Known the USB cable is not in the box........ How do they expect ya to be able to install and begin using this product right away. Its bad enough I can not find the slot to put all the ink cartridges but to know that even when I figure that out I still will not be able to use this till I locate and purchase a cable.. After saying a (few choice words) I decided all I can say is smluck Just My kind of LUCK..........
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