Rating: Summary: USB 1.1 or 2.0? Review: A point of information for the person who was concerned about USB - I used to work for a laser printer manufacturer and all three interfaces (USB 1.1, Parallel, and 10BaseT) work at about the same rate.The parameter that defines the speed of printing is the print engine itself in printers in this price range. If you could connect at USB 2.0 or 100BaseT I doubt you'd see any difference.
Rating: Summary: a good buy. Review: I bought it one month ago at fry's electronics (...). The setup took 5 mins and it started to print. The speed and printout quality is good. The biggest bonus is I am no longer being ripped off by inkjet cartridges. It goes to sleep mode and you do not have to turn it off. It works nicely on my USB 1.0 hub. The only thing I do not like is when it wakes up from sleep mode and starts to heat the toner, the light in the ceiling dims a little bit. It must drain a lot of current when the toner is being heated. If you want to keep your inkjet printer to print digital photos, it is time for you to give up. You can have the digital pictures printed at costco at $0.19 per 4 inch photo. Do a simple calculation and you will see which is cheaper. By the way, the photos printed by costco is the same quality as that printed from a film. The only need for an inkjet printer is when you want to print a personalized birthday card for some body. I would like to give it a 4.5 star. Since I don't have the option, I round it to a 5 star.
Rating: Summary: Issues with USB but otherwise ok Review: I bought this laser printer for its price but have mixed reviews Pros: 1. Nice printer for the price paid 2. Setup is relatively easy and they hook you up directly to their web page if you have trouble 3. Nice trouble shooting capabilities 4. Printing is ok but on the thinner side. I need to check how to enhance that. Cons: 1. Advertises that it work with a USB cable. So I bought a Belkin 6 feet PRO series USB 2.0 cable. After I connect everything no 2-way communication between computer and printer through USB cable. Then I get onto their web page and in FAQs it says: Printer may not work with certain USB cables. Use a USB cable less than 6 feet long. Can they print that ON TOP THE BOX. Last time I checked in the store the most popular USB cable was 6 feet and 10 feet long. If this printer is so sensitive to USB cable length and type why doesnt Brother INCLUDE one in the box that works with the printer. If you do need to keep the printer a little farther this may not cut it. 2. The other caveat which I read on their web page (after buying) is that if you are using a USB hub the printer may not work with it. 3. Printer may not work with certain USB ports. They recommend checking different USB slots in your computer if one doesnt work. 4. I was able to make it work using a parallel port printer cable (10 feet long) without any problem. In summary, I feel that this is not your flawless USB printer (in fact nowhere in the manual or box it says USB 1.1 or 2.0). This is essentially a parallel port printer. If you need a laser printer, and get a good deal on this one, go ahead and buy it. If you have an existing USB cable less than 6 feet long test it out, before buying a new cable.
Rating: Summary: Great for the Home Office Review: I bought this printer because I needed to print out lengthy manuscripts, as well as graphics-heavy PDF files. This printer does both very well. It prints very fast if you have one or two pages. When I printed a twenty-page document, it paused every few pages. The entire document printed, crisp and clear. I was particularly impressed with the graphics output, which came out much clearer and sharper than my old HP laser printer. I would recommend this printer to anyone who needs an affordable laser printer. Be aware that you will need to get a USB cable.
Rating: Summary: A good printer for home use Review: I bought this printer two months ago and it is doing a good job. I recommend this product to anyone who is tired of "keeping replacing the inkjet cartridges" and want a satisfying quality printer.
Rating: Summary: Great Printer For the Money Review: I could'nt afford to spend a thousand dollars for a printer. Basically I needed a laser printer to print my manuscipts and to get away from the annoying inkjet printers. I was losing money from the inkjet because of the costley cartridges. If you do not use them within 6 months, the cartridges dry up. No need to worry about that with a laser printer. I have been very pleased with the Brother. It performs and looks good. I certainly did not find this printer in Office Depot or Office Max. Glad I shopped with Amazon to purchase this item. Quality merchandaise for the money. Time will tell if this printer will hold up with continuous usage.
Rating: Summary: Great performance, price, and style Review: I picked this printer over the others from Samsung and HP in the sub $200 level because of the black & sliver color, which was probably not the best way to choose in hindsight. I'm using the printer with a parallel cable on Windows 2000 and the performance is great. The warm up time is short, probably 10-12 seconds, and it actualy does print @ 15 PPM on text and close to that on .pdf files with a mix of text and graphics. On large documents it only stops to reload the memory about every 50-60 pages and the paper tray is quite large for this price range. On the first toner (~3000 pages) I only had one paper jam using cheap copy paper. To load small media, such as labels and letters, there is a seperate tray with plastic slider guides which is quite handy and works perfectly.
I have only experianced one major problem and it was probably not due to Brother's design. I was printing when the power went down and when I tried to turn the printer back on I found that it had had a CPU fault. The tech support Brother had on the matter was friendly, but a bit long winded in that I spent 30 minutes going through the same procedures for hard reset over and over. They did replace the printer under warrenty (purchesed from Amazon) with second day Fedex and paid for return shipping, which I thought was more than reasonable. All in all my experiance has been possitive and I would definitely purchase again.
Rating: Summary: Read This Before You Buy! Review: I purchased this printer 6 months ago. I had been very satisfied with it up until recently. Unfortunately, three issues have come to light that you should know about before buying this printer.
First, Brother shipped my printer with a cartridge low in toner. Though I've had this printer about 6 months, I've actually only printed only several hundred pages with it over that time (the cartridge is supposedly good for 3,000). So imagine my surprise when the printer indicated it was low on toner. Since it's past the 6 week toner cartridge warranty, Brother refuses to rectify this situation and insists that I pay them another $70 for another toner cartridge. I guess that's why they can get away with selling their printers so cheaply--they can force you into shelling out more money just as your warranty runs out. I even had a low level technical support rep admit that they intentionally ship their printers with a low cartridges (he called them "tester" cartridges)!
Second, this printer is designed in such a way that when the printer senses that it is low on toner, it will NOT PRINT AT ALL. THERE IS NO WAY TO OVERRIDE THIS FEATURE. It is not a driver issue, but a hardware one. In my case, I was about to leave for the airport and needed to print out my presentation notes. But the printer absolutely refused to print! It was midnight and I was leaving first thing in the morning, so I couldn't just go out and get a new cartridge. You can take out the cartridge, shake it around it bit, and MAYBE get one or two more copies out of it. But other than that, you simply CANNOT print when the toner is "low" (even though there IS toner left in the cartridge!). So if you don't have an extra cartridge on hand when the printer decides that your toner is "low", you're in trouble! This is a maddening feature of this printer. Brother says it's to "preserve print quality," but I'd prefer if they'd let the user decide when she or he wants to "preserve print quality" versus printing nothing at all! I've never had a printer do this. I could print for weeks (even months) when my old NEC laser printer indicated it was "low" in toner. If I had known that this was not the case with this printer, I would not have purchased it. It's simply another way for Brother to get more money out their customers with their overpriced printer cartridges.
Third: Brother customer support. While it was quick and courteous at the first level of technical support, it is slow and irresponsive beyond that. My complaint about the low printer cartridge was "escalated" twice--I was promised a call back on two occasions from two different managers. It's been over two weeks and no call backs!
Caveat emptor. My advice? Don't be wooed with the low price--keep shopping!
Rating: Summary: Best for personal use Review: It is very easy to install this printer with CD instruction. The speed of printing is sufficient for personal use. In addition, I think that Brother toner is cheaper and has availability to print more sheets of paper than others. So, I think that this printer is best for personal use. If you use USB cable, it must be shorter than 6 feet.
Rating: Summary: excellent Review: quiet, fast, high print quality and relatively low price!
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