Rating: 
Summary: Impressive
Review: It is difficult to believe that so much is available for less than 100 bucks. The document feeder works flawlessly. The scanner is great for documents. The fax is easy to set up through your PC with the supplied software. The Paperport software supplied with the unit alone sells for the cost of the printer, so this is like buy the software and get the multi-function printer/fax/scanner free.Brother's drivers are excellent. They are well written and unobtrusive. The drivers allow you to customize 3 settings to your needs (they are named "photo", "web", and "text") You select whatever settings you want for each of the 3 named categories and they are saved automatically. Then, when you scan you just select one of the 3 settings and all of your selected customizations, like resolution and color depth, are used for that scan. If you load up the document feeder with 20 pages and scan to Paperport, they are saved as a single 20 page Paperport document. Paperport then allows you to edit, annotate, and touch up your scans and file them away in a file directory type structure which is fully compatible and navigable with Windows Explorer. You can also export your scans from Paperport to other formats like multi-page tiffs, jpegs, bmps, etc. So far, I am very pleased with this unit, especially for the money. Since I have only had it for a week, if time alters my opinion I will be sure to come back and edit this post. For now though, I highly recommend this unit.
Rating:
Summary: Ink solution
Review: Just bought my Brother tonight and is still in box so can't really review product yet but will at a future date. Was reading harsh reviews because of inkjet replacement prices. I just ordered the black lc31bks for $5.23 and each of the colors
lc31c,lc31m,and lc31ys for $5.00 each at inkjet.madness.com.
So that should eliminate that cost replacement problem for me.
Will let you know how I like the unit soon.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't be fooled by the low price - BEWARE of INK SCAM!
Review: My machine SHUT-DOWN and refused to print in Black, supposedly because one of the Color ink cartridges was "empty." This seemed impossible.
I had the machine for less than 6 months and I only used it occasionally to receive B&W faxes (fewer than 100 text pages). I NEVER, EVER printed anything in color! NOT ONCE! Yet, the color ink was used up before the black ink.
Brother's Customer Service sheepishly explained that the unit's frequent (and loud) "maintenance cyles" consume ink by squirting small amounts of ink through the print heads. There is no way to disable this function. They also claim that they intentionally designed the machine to stop working when ANY of the cartridges go empty, in order to prevent "damage" to the print heads(?). This sounds like nothing more than a marketing ploy. Brother forces you to continuously buy their (very expensive) ink, whether you use it or not. Diabolically ingenious!
Where does all this ink go? After spraying entire cartridges of ink inside the machine (not on paper) you would expect to see large gobs of ink all over the place, yet there is no sign of it. Maybe there is a secret compartment that will someday overflow all over my desk. Or perhaps the ink is vaporized into the air. Breath deeply if you dare, brother.
Brother Customer Service didn't have a clue about where the ink goes. I know this all sounds unbelievable, but it is true.
This machine seems to be designed for one purpose, and one purpose only: to sell you unnecessary, high-priced ink cartridges. Shame on you, Brother! I have tried to get a refund from Brother, but so far they have ingored me.
I refuse to play their game and am shopping for a HP replacement product. So far, the HP 4215 multi-function looks promising - and if one ink cartrige runs out, you can keep on printing with the remaining colors. From past experience, the HP units do not wastefully consume ink doing needless "maintenance cycles." Their print quality is superior as well.
Until I buy a replacement, here is my, admittedly awkward, workaround to keep my FAX capability functioning. To receive faxes, I set the Brother to pickup calls on the 4th ring, and I set my computer's Microsoft Fax software to pickup on the first ring. That way, incoming faxes are received by my computer, bypassing the Brother. If my computer is turned off when a fax comes in there is no practical way to retrieve the fax from it's memory, therefore, I have the Brother set to Forward all incoming faxes (it won't print them, remember) to a free "efax" account on the internet (long distance telephone charges apply). The faxes are then converted to emails that I receive back when I turn on my computer. I can still send faxes with the Brother, but naturally it won't print out confirmations.
Rating:
Summary: Machine Error 41
Review: Printer is less than six months old. Eats an unbelievable amount of ink. Always getting paper feed errors. Must be on before turn computer on or can't print. Just got FATAL machine error 41 which means it will have to be returned to Brother for repair. What a total piece of junk. NEVER EVER BUY THIS PRINTER!!
Rating:
Summary: Beware
Review: Seems like a great buy, but the unit shuts down when it 'thinks' the ink cartridges are empty. I'm replacing FULL cartridges after only about 50 B/W pages. I'll try replacing one time, but if this continues, I'll have to replace the unit. NOTE there is no manual override, the printer will NOT work if it thinks a cartridge is empty. My cost? 50 pages for $20 of ink, 40 cents a page. Use Kinkos, it's cheaper.
Rating:
Summary: Don't be fooled
Review: The machine itself it great. Easy to use etc. But it's the dudes who programmed the "artificial intelligence" in this thing that really messed it up and has me pissed off. If one of the cartridges goes out, YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING! Supposedly the fax doesn't even work. Huh? This is an obvious attempt that they just want you to buy buy buy more cartridges than you need. I only use the black. I have never touched the colors. But for some reason, the colors run out before the black. What the...? And now they want me to replace everything before the machine will be usable again. I looked at the colors, and it clearly still has A LOT of ink or whatever inside. And there isn't a way to fool the machine by just taking it out and putting it back in. I'm really thinking about just filling it with toilet water to let the machine think there's something inside. Don't know if it'll work. But here's the bottom line. I ran through the whole set (or the machine thinks I did) of ink in 4 months. So here's what you need to know. It costs about $80 or so to replace the set. So do you really want to pay $240 a year just to use the fax machine? If you actually do some printing, think $400+. This is lame. Fellow users. Anyone have suggestions please help us all.
Rating:
Summary: Don't be fooled
Review: The machine itself it great. Easy to use etc. But it's the dudes who programmed the "artificial intelligence" in this thing that really messed it up and has me pissed off. If one of the cartridges goes out, YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING! Supposedly the fax doesn't even work. Huh? This is an obvious attempt that they just want you to buy buy buy more cartridges than you need. I only use the black. I have never touched the colors. But for some reason, the colors run out before the black. What the...? And now they want me to replace everything before the machine will be usable again. I looked at the colors, and it clearly still has A LOT of ink or whatever inside. And there isn't a way to fool the machine by just taking it out and putting it back in. I'm really thinking about just filling it with toilet water to let the machine think there's something inside. Don't know if it'll work. But here's the bottom line. I ran through the whole set (or the machine thinks I did) of ink in 4 months. So here's what you need to know. It costs about $80 or so to replace the set. So do you really want to pay $240 a year just to use the fax machine? If you actually do some printing, think $400+. This is lame. Fellow users. Anyone have suggestions please help us all.
Rating:
Summary: You get what you pay for
Review: This thing looks great, but I have had two major problems 1) The printer will not print if it thinks one of the ink cartridges is empty, which happens often when they are not empty: it has happened to me with nearly new cartridges. It essentially renders the device useless. Anyone know how to work around this? Please post a review if you do. 2) The paper feeder does not pick up paper unless I manually hold my finger against the tension arm. Clearly inconvenient, especially if you want to receive faxes.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Value
Review: We have had the machine for about a week and have tried out all the gadgets. The fax is easy to use both from the machine and when sending PC faxes. The copier works great and is easy to use. Fast printing for text documents, color printing is okay too. The scanner is also easy to use and the text conversion software worked well when we scanned in an image with text and it converted it to a Word document with very few errors. The easy setup instructions are just that, easy. The software allows accessing the MFC-3220c from your PC. Some parameters can be changed from the PC, but not all. Three downsides that really don't bother us because of the great price of this machine.
1. Scanner is the type that feeds through so you cannot copy
anything thicker than paper, like a book.
2. We printed an 8 1/2 x 11 photo that took about
10 minutes to print. It is photographic quality but
good, not excellent.
3. Only USB connection. So if you want a great Fax, Scanner, Copier, Printer and don't mind slow photo printing, and don't need to scan a book, and have a USB connection to your PC...this is the one for an unbelievable low price.
| 
