Rating: 
Summary: Use it alongside your color inkjet - save a bundle !!
Review: Great deal, easy setup, low ongoing costs!I have owned a Brother HL-6 laser printer for about 6 years and it has held up very well. At the time I bought it, price was a major factor - but when you shop price you always wonder about quality. Aside from one small piece broken by my kids resting their feet on the printer feed tray (!) the HL-6 ran like a charm for 5 years. Only in the last year did paper jams and the like start to occur more frequently. It was time for an upgrade. But I'm still a cheap guy ! I found the HL-1240 and the price was great. I can't say how long it will last - who could ? But I expect from my experience with the other Brother laser that it will be a long time. I don't plan to use it in an office environment - just busy home use. I suppose a high-volume office might go with a higher-end model. The printer was up and running in 15 minutes. It has a built-in USB port but I used the old-fashioned parallel port; running it off my son's Windows ME machine in a small home network. It works like a charm printing on the network, too, something many [inexpensive] color inkjets don't manage. Some nice features include a better (internal) paper tray system and some that I haven't tried yet: direct feed for single-sheets and envelopes and a neat one that allows you to feed thicker paper like card stock in from the back so that it doesn't get bent on the regular curvy internal paper path. You can also set up a "watermark" that prints (light gray ??) on your sheets ("CONFIDENTIAL" for CIA types or "DRAFT" when you want everyone to know it really is!) It has a slick option for printing multiple pages in reduction - up to 16 pages scaled onto 1 page. Four-to-one makes nice (very readable at 600 dpm) "thumbnail-like" printouts. It also allows "banner" type printing. I tried to 'blow-up' a one page print to a 2 by 2 banner. It did the scaling but included small (1/4") margins all around so I'd still have to cut and tape to end up with my 17 x 22 banner. I'll bet there is some way around this that I haven't found - yet. I really like their toner cartridge pricing...This compares very well with some other brands that go for [more money]. A 6000-sheet capable cartridge is also available. Don't know the price. If you are comparing to inkjets you know (don't you !) that the cost per page for inkjets - even Black & white, is much higher than lasers. You can go broke when your kids print out internet pages for homework and the like. Consider, instead, a [inexpensive] inkjet for color only AND a laser like this... desk space could be an issue but this is a compact unit and the color inkjets are getting teeny. You'll save a lot aiming all your regular B&W printing to the laser....The only negative I could honk about arises because of another feature - the ability to load "legal" size paper into the paper tray. This means the tray extends out the back of the printer about 4 inches, even when its loaded with regular letter paper. That extra capability is one I'll never use so the need for the extra desktop clearance is annoying. Otherwise, overall the unit is a nice, compact package about 12" x 12 by about 10" high. Quick. Did I mention its quick. Of course you saw that in the specs. But moving to 12 ppm from my old 6 ppm is a huge jump... printouts are just... there ! Great product.
Rating:
Summary: This Brother Laser Printer was my best purchase of 1999!
Review: Honestly folks - I run a small office in North Dallas, and this Laser Printer has done everything that it said it could. The printing is fast, the text is sharp, and I am so pleased with the prurchase that I am taking the time to tell everyone else that this printer is fantastic!
Rating:
Summary: excellent quality, quiet and dependable
Review: I bought this printer 3 months ago at OfficeMax. I also purchased NEC printer and wanted to compare the two, since the specs on NEC looked better and I like that brand. NEC printer, however, made a high pitch noise when printing, and it would not shut up until 15 minutes later. Brother was quiet with excellent output quality. It also printed faster. There was never a question in my mind which printer I keep - Brother won it. Don't look at the specs, look at printouts and listen to noise to make sure it's not going to bother you.
Rating: 
Summary: Printer is great, support could use work
Review: I bought this printer for light home use and personal business use. I used to have an Apple StyleWriter inkjet printer, but was dissatisfied with it. The ink smudged, weird lines showed up across the page... oh, the problems were niggling but endless! Whenever I had a business letter or a resume to send out, I'd have to borrow someone else's laser printer or go to Kinko's just so I could get a good copy. I never considered getting a laser printer for myself, thinking they were too expensive. But this Brother printer doesn't cost that much more than I had paid for the StyleWriter, and the print quality is worlds better. But there is one huge gripe. I realize paper manuals are on their way out, but still, it would be nice to have a booklet in my hands so that I can figure things out on the fly, instead of having to switch from program to program in order to figure out how to, say, print envelopes. But this seems to be a dependable printer for light use, and I'm quite happy I finally broke down and purchased something that actually works. Whether other personal laser printers are better or worse, I couldn't say. The Brother is a solid entry in the market, though, and I do recommend it for the home user.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to install and to use!
Review: I bought this printer last June for my 78-year-old mother and she lives 2,000 miles away. It was a breeze to install on her USB port on her Compaq Presario notebook (I installed it for her when I visited, shortly after Amazon shipped the printer). Mom hasn't had a bit of problems with it in all this time, and she definitely is NOT computer/printer literate at all. Actually, after I went home, I was expecting the "tech support calls" for me to walk her through various problems she might have encountered but there hasn't been a one in all these months!
I happened to be on this page because I'm going to order one for myself!
Rating:
Summary: Easy to install and to use!
Review: I bought this printer last June for my 78-year-old mother and she lives 2,000 miles away. It was a breeze to install on her USB port on her Compaq Presario notebook (I installed it for her when I visited, shortly after Amazon shipped the printer). Mom hasn't had a bit of problems with it in all this time, and she definitely is NOT computer/printer literate at all. Actually, after I went home, I was expecting the "tech support calls" for me to walk her through various problems she might have encountered but there hasn't been a one in all these months!
I happened to be on this page because I'm going to order one for myself!
Rating: 
Summary: Needs Frequent Cleaning, Prone to Jams
Review: I bought two of these for home use about two years ago. They see moderate, not heavy, use. Both tend to produce smudged printouts. Cleaning is somewhat tedious, and needs to be done weekly. One of the two jams fairly often, considering its light workload. I had no problems printing from Windows 2000; however, when I upgraded to Windows XP the print quality was unacceptable when using XP's default driver. Also, the printer would lose jobs if it was asleep when printing was started. After installing the XP driver from Brother's web site, these problems seem to be resolved.
Rating:
Summary: Very pleased owner
Review: I have been using my Brother laser printer for about two and a half years, and I am very very pleased with its performance. I currently have three different printers on my desk (yes, a large desk with no space left), and the HL-1240 is the work-horse of the bunch. Almost all printed material gets sent to the HL-1240 because of its speed, quality print, and economy. Speed - Surprisingly, the printer is advertised at 12 pages per minute, and it actually does print 12 full pages every minute. Unlike many bubble jet printers whose rated speed is rarely what they actually pump-out, this laser printer never slows down. Quality print - No lines across graphics like with bubble jets, no smudges of ink, just nice crisp print every time, always. Economy - Aside from the purchase price being very reasonable, I have yet to change the toner! I have no idea how many sheets it has printed, but compared to the costs of bubble jet cartridges, the printer has already paid for itself in ink savings alone. Design - Having the paper tray on the bottom has two big and important advantages. First, the footprint size is smaller (for those of us with crowded desks), and secondly, it keeps the heat of the machine away from your desk top. In the past I had a laser with a top-side paper tray, and when the day arrived to move the printer to a new location, I found that the heat from the printer had totally ruined the wood's surface directly under where the printer had been sitting. Bottom paper trays are an important feature to look for. Dependability - I did have a piece of paper jam once, but it was my fault for feeding it in wrong. Removing jammed paper is fast and easy with the back and front of the printer having covers which pop open for access. No bad points! All good!
Rating:
Summary: So far the little printer that can, and one that couldn't
Review: I have owned the 1240 for a little over a week, so far it's fed 2000 plus pages without a single jam. The Xerox P8 it replaces required a constant babysitter and was a complete nightmare to feed paper that had already been through it. Setup out of the box is straight forward, driver install likewise. Noise level low, speed through parallel port almost as advertised. Print quality is excellent for text. Graphics I've not really used it for. It may even last more than 6 months :-) If you are thinking of a P8 for anything other than light home use (or need to print both sides of the paper) please try and get the extra $100 together for either this one or an NEC870, it will save you money in anger management classes later.
Rating:
Summary: Great Printer, but lousy drivers...
Review: I have owned this printer for about a year now. Every since the first day i have always had a problem installing it into my system. I have used it on Windows based OS such as (95, 98,ME, and 2000) each time I changed over was a headache for about three hours. As far the printer it is excellent . no complaints. They really need to make the drivers more compatible with Windows. And dont bother with their customer service, It is horrible.
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