Brother MFC-5440CN

[inigel]

Someone has offered to give me a Brother 5440CN multi-function. It comes with a Mac driver disk, so I thought, why not? It's free, and practically new!

Has any other forum member used this model printer? Any issues I should know about? What about scanning?

 

[scienide09]

I have a love-hate relationship with my Brother printer. However, it's not that model.

Loves:
-the different fucntions are easy to figure out and use
-the built in fax machine was used way more often than I would have thought
-easy connections to my Mac
-scanner function give clean, crisp images

Hates:
-the Brother utility that monitors printing is invasive on startup (even when removed from the startup cue)
-sucks up ink like it's going out of style
- inkjet cartridges -- even when a colour cartridge is empty, it will refuse to print plain black text.

Right now, I refuse to buy ink for it. I still use the fax, scanner, and built-in card reader on a regular basis.

I don't know if your Brother model will have the same issues with cartridges -- it may be worth avoiding for this reason alone.

 

[inigel]

I have a love-hate relationship with my Brother printer. However, it's not that model.

Loves:
-the different fucntions are easy to figure out and use
-the built in fax machine was used way more often than I would have thought
-easy connections to my Mac
-scanner function give clean, crisp images

Hates:
-the Brother utility that monitors printing is invasive on startup (even when removed from the startup cue)
-sucks up ink like it's going out of style
- inkjet cartridges -- even when a colour cartridge is empty, it will refuse to print plain black text.

Right now, I refuse to buy ink for it. I still use the fax, scanner, and built-in card reader on a regular basis.

I don't know if your Brother model will have the same issues with cartridges -- it may be worth avoiding for this reason alone.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll give it a couple of weeks just to see how it handles. I'm just having trouble finding Mac OS X drivers because I didn't install all the printer drivers with the OS. Now I'm going to have to dig out the installer disk.

 

[J&JPolangin]

...I have a B&W laser AIO #7840W and it is a fantastic AIO!

Newegg just has a sale on them so they could be had for $270 shipped to a military address...if you could ship it via UPS it was ~$95 cheaper with the "free" shipping option.

I use a HP7260 for the rare times when I need to make a color print of something - GO B&W laser if you don't use much color - its much less expensive to operate long term!

 

[inigel]

GO B&W laser if you don't use much color - its much less expensive to operate long term!

That what I was planning on, a network laser printer, but because someone gave this to me, I thought I'd give it a try.