Rating: 
Summary: At only 2 cents per page and 17PPM you need one of these
Review: I have been staring at the Brother model HL 1440 for quite some time. It was Consumer Reports number one pick. I decided to go with the HL-5040 because of the additional ram and extra fonts. When I read the owners manual it showed me that a lot of other features are built in as well. I like the fact that it prints a page so fast, and only costs 2 cents per page. My Lexmark X83 multifunction does a nice job in color but has a single page print cost of 6 cents to $1.50 when printing a full-page photograph. Now I think nothing of whipping out a 20-page document. The speed is another practical issue. At a max of 17ppm the paper is coming out so fast that one page is settling in the print tray, while another one is coming out right on top of it
To be critical of the unit is to cite the comments in C Reports, and ZD Net reviews as to the medium quality results when printing graphics. I think that is due in part to the print per page cost being the lowest out of all of the printers. The HL1440 was rated a little higher in graphics, but the same in text. I think black and white photos mixed into an MS Publisher document look fine for black and white. The laser gives you an acceptable printed photo for a few cents. Make up a single 4-page flyer, and make a hundred copies, and you can see that the laser printer could pay for itself in a single printing next to an inkjet. Makes you want to market your tail off with the economy of the laser.
I networked the house, and put the brother HL-5040 in my home office, and now have the option of printing from any one of the machines.
It comes with 8 Meg of ram built in, that is permanently installed, and you have one expansion slot for a single added ram chip. I went into Boogle.com and found a supplier with a 128 Meg ram chip that is generic. The 128 was only thirty-six dollars with free shipping. The printer will work fine with the 8 Meg it comes with, but if you send it a 50-page PDF file, the extra ram is a good idea to help prevent bottlenecks.
I love the fact that it has a 250-sheet paper tray. The additional 250-sheet tray for a total of 500 is an option.
The 5040 was listed in Consumer Reports as being the loudest of the laser printers, but I find it to be very quiet.
The big bonus is that with a laser printer your ink never dries out. It is a powder to start with. My friend bought an NEC in the mid 80's and did very little printing, and just last year his cartridge ran out. The problem with my Lexmark inkjet is that the darn cartridges wear out so fast even if you don't use them, and they are expensive.
You do not want to move this machine without removing the drum-toner cartridge first. Brother has big warning messages on the toner bag, stating you can do irreparable harm if you don't remove it first. I imagine that the toner can spill into the workings of the printer and do come damage. Some people commenting on streaking may have done just that. If you move it into the next room, treat it like nitroglycerine, or remove the cartridge first.
The bottom line is the price. (...)the reduction in price to start with, this printer is a super buy. I noticed that Brother has a 5140 now to replace this one. It has the same results on graphics, has the same print resolution, and only a couple of pages per minute improvement on the print speed. I saved the extra money by buying the 5040 and put some of that savings, into the 128 Meg memory expansion chip, and still had some money left over. The 5140 does come with 16 Megs instead of 8 like the 5040.
Bubble jets and inkjets will give you a slightly darker and larger text. The laser is smooth, and truly fuzz free, even under a microscope. I find it easier on the eyes to read. I am keeping my Lexmarks X83s for when I want to print photographs, and when I want to print something out right where I am, instead of going into the office.
I'm not into yeah this, and boo that. I think if I had to have just one printer, it would be a full featured bubble-ink jet, so I could do color too. Adding a laser to your arsenal is the ultimate conclusion. With the price of these Brothers, and the high ratings, (...), makes them a must have. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent -- BUT a large power drain!
Review: I have owned the HL -5040 predecessor and have used it for 3 years at work. It was fantastic: efficient, easy to use, never jambs, and reliable. So I bought the 5040 last week. I have the same opinion of this model EXCEPT -- This printer draws a LOT of juice. I only have a computer that draws 200 watts, a desk light that draws 60 watts and this printer and it dims the light to an uncomforable level. In fact it makes me nervous. This is all that runs on a 15A curcuit - and has never happened beofre. I have read reviews on other sites about other people having similar problems with this printer. The printer is great. The power drain is not! Be sure you have a 20A circuit for this baby.
Rating:
Summary: Quiet, fast and beautiful text
Review: I have the latest model of the HL-5040 and it works like a charm. It's quiet in the working and sleep modes. It is particularly efficient when used with a Macintosh. Apple and Brother were made for each other. The latest model is compatible with the OS X Mac. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent printer for the money
Review: I have this printer shared between Macs and Windows machines on my home network using a print server.It's a sweet machine. Quick to warm up and fast to print. With 8 Megs of RAM, it has never given me a memory-problem. Comparable HP and QMS budget-printers that come with 2 Megs of RAM will need memory upgrades. QMS printers in this price range have only USB ports. The Brother has both USB and parallel. It's very nice having the option available and I use both the USB and parallel ports simultaneously without a problem. I love that Brother has made drivers for Mac OS 9 and OS X as well as Windows. It also emulates an HP printer. The emulation-mode was essential for me when I decided to share the printer using a 3rd party (cheap) print server. GIMP Print for OS X does not have Brother drivers, but it does have HP drivers that work very well. This printer does jam occasionally. Jams are pretty easy to clear and it has a function to re-print the last page, so I seldom lose a print job. I hate wasting paper, but it will almost always jam when I re-use paper in the paper tray. So I take my bad prints and drafts and re-use the paper in my inkjet instead. The only reason that this printer got 4 stars instead of 5 is that the 1200 dpi print mode is only suitable for text. Graphics come out too dark at this resolution. It's odd because the 1200 dpi mode is supposed to be enhanced for such printing. The driver does not permit tweaking to make this work better.
Rating: 
Summary: Brother 5040 is a piece of junk...get the HP 1012
Review: I have three complaints and one positive thing to say:
The printer was not networkable...I could not share the printer peer to peer. I know what I am doing...I have shared printers dozens of times (it is a major part of my job) and I am telling you that (although the printer may have been broken) it appeared that the win9X driver did not support sharing. With Win XP home, I was able to get a little farther, and designate the printer as "shared" but it never showed up on any of our other workgroup machines. My paranoid theory is that Brother wants you to buy the necissary ethernet sharing device, so they disabled sharing. I plugged an HP 1012 Laserjet in, and it networked perfectly, so I know it is not my environment. My second gripe is with envelopes. All three times I printed a standart size 10 envelope, it jammed. My final gripe is with Brother's tech support. "Due to high call volume" Brother was not able to take my call...ever. It wasn't a question of holding for hours...that option was never given. Their e-mail support takes DAYS to get a response, and it was irrelavent...they insist it is an environmental problem, which I disagree with since the HP 1012 works fine. The only thing I like about the printer is the quality of the printing. It really is a good printer, if you are using one PC and never run any envelopes through. The resolution is twice that of the HP 1012, but I would save $70 and get the HP 1012--which is exactly what I did. I was so happy to give that printer back to Office Depot!
Rating:
Summary: Only Cheap
Review: I must say I was disappointed about the printer. I bought one from Frys a month ago. Setup was quick and easy. Printed test page, and some word doc OK.
When I tried to print a direction from Yahoo map, it shows horizontal white bars. Try it couple times, it happened randomly.
Called support, waited for over 25 mins. Then I was asked to clean the drum unit. No help. Went to level 2 support. Rep insisted it is the connection problem.
I have to get new parallel cable, and new USB cable. Tried both. No help. It happens randomly, so don't know what it is.
Still waiting for an answer from Brother.
I am not happy with the printer.
Rating:
Summary: Easy set up, high quality.
Review: I opened the box, and within 2 minutes (literally) I was printing documents. No warm up time, super high speed. Great quality - as good as anything you'll need for normal individual use (documents, resume's etc). Simple, simple, simple. Note: if you buy this for a window computer, make sure you have an appropriate USB cable or buy one. It doesn't come with the printer. But I knew that, and already had a cable when the printer arrived. I'm happy here. I'm pretty tech savvy, but I didn't want to hassle too much. I did some simple research, this printer seemed to be the best in this price range, so I bought it. I can't imagine a reason anyone would be unhappy. Now I can take "get a new laser" off my to-do list, and I have no buyer's remorse with this model. That's what counts!
I also plan on sticking this on my wifi network, but I haven't done that yet.
Rating:
Summary: A Winner For the Second Time
Review: I purchased my Brother HL-5040 from Amazon.com for $190.00 delivered, including the USB 2.0 cable, and the TN-530 3,000 page "starter" toner cartridge and the DR-500 drum rated for 20,000 pages. I am an English professor and generally use it for printing out my papers (15 to 30 pages) and drafts of books (up to 500 pages), and master copies of handouts and exams and the like for my classes (I have an HP DeskJet for color printing). The Brother HL-5040 printer has a nice compact footprint: there is no hideous projecting tray or paper catcher as with several of the competing models, and the output area on top holds fifty or more printed pages without spilling them. The printer is also low enough at "9.9 inches" to fit under a foot-high shelf in my work room (so it doesn't take up the valuable real-estate on the top shelf) The 12 point text (which is the standard in my field) is very sharp, and the old (circa 1880s) political cartoon images I've reproduced from scanned photocopies of newspapers look great: I've no banding or dark areas. Having read the other reviews, I want to share some of my thoughts that may shed light on the differing views regarding the Brother printers. This printer replaces a Brother HL-1240 model I've owned for over two years. I replaced that printer (it was given to my sister) because its drum was failing, after making approximately 12,000 copies. Until the drum began to fail, I never had a single problem with the printer: it never ever jammed even once (my previous laser printer, an Epson 1400, jammed all the time). For $110 I could have replaced the drum unit (as my sister did), but for $190 I upgraded to the HL-5040. So, while I've seen the critiques of the Brother printers because of their drums, and I have in fact elected to replace my HL-1240, I still don't think the harsh criticisms directed at Brother for this situation are fair. Here's what I think: it is not likely that very many $200 laser printers will ever print out 100,000 or even 60,000 high quality copies over their lifetimes. I say this in part because I suspect the paper transport mechanisms in all the printers in the personal use category are likely to be at least somewhat degraded by the time the printer approaches that number of copies, and once that happens--as anyone who's ever tried to nurse an aging photocopier knows--the point of ever diminishing returns has been reached. And I say this also because many, if not most, small office and home users like me are unlikely to use a $200 printer often enough to generate 60k to 100k copies in less than five years. At my rate of use, I will have to own my new printer for 8 years to reach the upper number. Given the rate of technological change, as good as it now is, I seriously doubt that I'll want to have this printer for that long. That said, this time I intend to keep the printer long enough to replace the drum unit at least twice, and, assuming I get the same 12,000 copies out of each drum, that puts me in the 36,000 copies range. When I crunch the numbers (the drums presently cost $140.00 and the 6,500 page toner cartridges run $75), my cost per copy for the first 16,000 estimated copies (using the included DR-500 drum and the TN-530, and purchasing 2 TN-560 toner cartridges), works out to 2.1 cents per page. Of course, as we all know, the estimated yields are highly inflated. Assuming I get 36,000 copies out of the 3 drums (including the one included with the printer) and 5,000 copies from the TN-560 toner cartridges, plus 2,000 to 2,500 from the included TN-530, I'd need to buy 7 TN-560s to get to that number. This would add up to a $995.00 total investment and would mean my actual per copy cost would be approximately 2.8 cents over the "life" of the printer. This is not the low 1.3 cents per copy figure I've seen in one magazine review, but once all the inflated estimates are cut down to size, I suspect it is quite competitive with what the other companies can offer.
Rating:
Summary: A Winner For the Second Time
Review: I purchased my Brother HL-5040 from Amazon.com for $190.00 delivered, including the USB 2.0 cable, and the TN-530 3,000 page "starter" toner cartridge and the DR-500 drum rated for 20,000 pages. I am an English professor and generally use it for printing out my papers (15 to 30 pages) and drafts of books (up to 500 pages), and master copies of handouts and exams and the like for my classes (I have an HP DeskJet for color printing). The Brother HL-5040 printer has a nice compact footprint: there is no hideous projecting tray or paper catcher as with several of the competing models, and the output area on top holds fifty or more printed pages without spilling them. The printer is also low enough at "9.9 inches" to fit under a foot-high shelf in my work room (so it doesn't take up the valuable real-estate on the top shelf) The 12 point text (which is the standard in my field) is very sharp, and the old (circa 1880s) political cartoon images I've reproduced from scanned photocopies of newspapers look great: I've no banding or dark areas. Having read the other reviews, I want to share some of my thoughts that may shed light on the differing views regarding the Brother printers. This printer replaces a Brother HL-1240 model I've owned for over two years. I replaced that printer (it was given to my sister) because its drum was failing, after making approximately 12,000 copies. Until the drum began to fail, I never had a single problem with the printer: it never ever jammed even once (my previous laser printer, an Epson 1400, jammed all the time). For $110 I could have replaced the drum unit (as my sister did), but for $190 I upgraded to the HL-5040. So, while I've seen the critiques of the Brother printers because of their drums, and I have in fact elected to replace my HL-1240, I still don't think the harsh criticisms directed at Brother for this situation are fair. Here's what I think: it is not likely that very many $200 laser printers will ever print out 100,000 or even 60,000 high quality copies over their lifetimes. I say this in part because I suspect the paper transport mechanisms in all the printers in the personal use category are likely to be at least somewhat degraded by the time the printer approaches that number of copies, and once that happens--as anyone who's ever tried to nurse an aging photocopier knows--the point of ever diminishing returns has been reached. And I say this also because many, if not most, small office and home users like me are unlikely to use a $200 printer often enough to generate 60k to 100k copies in less than five years. At my rate of use, I will have to own my new printer for 8 years to reach the upper number. Given the rate of technological change, as good as it now is, I seriously doubt that I'll want to have this printer for that long. That said, this time I intend to keep the printer long enough to replace the drum unit at least twice, and, assuming I get the same 12,000 copies out of each drum, that puts me in the 36,000 copies range. When I crunch the numbers (the drums presently cost $140.00 and the 6,500 page toner cartridges run $75), my cost per copy for the first 16,000 estimated copies (using the included DR-500 drum and the TN-530, and purchasing 2 TN-560 toner cartridges), works out to 2.1 cents per page. Of course, as we all know, the estimated yields are highly inflated. Assuming I get 36,000 copies out of the 3 drums (including the one included with the printer) and 5,000 copies from the TN-560 toner cartridges, plus 2,000 to 2,500 from the included TN-530, I'd need to buy 7 TN-560s to get to that number. This would add up to a $995.00 total investment and would mean my actual per copy cost would be approximately 2.8 cents over the "life" of the printer. This is not the low 1.3 cents per copy figure I've seen in one magazine review, but once all the inflated estimates are cut down to size, I suspect it is quite competitive with what the other companies can offer.
Rating:
Summary: I Gambled and Won!
Review: I read most of the reviews on the Brother HL 5040 and there were a few criticisms that concerned me. People wrote that it was loud and handled envelopes poorly. I decided to take my chances since the printer was only $150 with no tax and shipping included. In its defense, I must say that my printer does a great job printing envelopes. I ended up printing out wedding invitations and envelopes. It printed the outer envelopes, inner envelopes, and RSVP envelopes as well as the card stock for the invitation cards, maps, and RSVP cards for 120 invitations! It was easy to feed them through the manual feeder. I had to do it one at a time, but if you're on a budget, it beats paying for it to be professionally done (and hopefully, I'll only have to do it once in my life). It's also a very speedy printer and so manually feeding the hungry Brother was relatively painless. There was a tendency for envelopes to curl when they came out. It wasn't a problem after they had been stuffed. I believe that curling problems would happen with any laser printer since the paper gets heated up while being run through the feeders. The graphics for my maps were sharp in the "HQ 1200" mode and I did not have to purchase extra memory for it. Text was sharp in all modes. Paper would jam when I was dumb enough to try to feed paper, cards, or envelopes through the manual feeder that weren't completely flat. Unjamming was a piece of cake. I've also not had a problem with it being too loud. I don't keep it on all the time and I don't print while someone is trying to sleep. I've never experienced any high-pitched squeal that others have written about. The only criticism that I do agree with is that it takes a large amount of energy to operate. When I print, the lights start to dim and I turn off other energy guzzling appliances. But if you're the type that likes to blow-dry your hair with the microwave on while printing on a laser printer all at the same time, you might want to consider... a gas-powered microwave!... or... the "wet hair look!" To sum it all up, my printer works wonderfully and I was pleased that it did not exhibit some of the nasty things some of the reviews had mentioned. Good luck!
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