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Brother MFC 6490CW
by blackrose_
I am not a particularly technically minded individual, so rather than go through all the technical gubbins about this machine (which are available here anyway: http://members.dooyoo.co.uk/fax-machine/brother-mfc-6490cw/details/), I will try to chat about my own experiences with using it and what I make of it!
Setting up ... new peripherals is always something which scares me a little bit as it starts to wander into the realms of things I know very little about and care about even less! Having said that, after watching my other half set this machine up on his computer, I was able to do it on my own computer without any assistance. I simply plugged it in, windows found it straight away, and all that was necessary for me to do was click next on a few boxes and it was done! It really is "plug and play", with very little for even a total novice computer user to become concerned with. Drivers etc are downloaded automatically so long as your PC/laptop is connected to the internet, and it really is a very simple and basic affair.
This may, at first glance, seem a pricey and peculiar choice for a home printer/scanner etc, but it is the one we chose when our old printer (also an all-in-one) juddered to a halt about a year or so ago. Printing is just as easy as with any other printer really, there is a simple slot in the front of the machine to load in the paper (even my 8 yr old can do this), and just above this is a slot where the paper comes out. Our main reason for choosing an A3 capable printer was that my other half fancies himself as something of a digital artist, and hopes to get into selling posters, cards and the like, so we wanted a printer that would not only meet all our "home" needs but would give us printing results of a quality good enough to sell to other people. On the printing results front I cannot fault this printer; I have had posters bought online which have more visible "dots" on them than the images delivered by this machine, even when A3 images have been printed out. We have used it to produce several pieces for our home which visitors have commented favourably on and even asked where we purchased from! It also handles multiple copies well without paper jamming or anything of that nature, so is great for invitations and that sort of thing.
We wanted a photocopier partly because I am a bit of a musician, and whilst I do purchase genuine copies of manuscripts etc., I like to add my own performance marks, breath marks and the like to my own photocopied copy, so that the original remains free of scrawled random messages which would probably mean little to anyone other than me, as I tend to do them in my own odd form of invented abbreviations! Photocopying could npot be simpler using this machine. The bed where you place the item to be copied (on the top of the machine, the same place you place any item to be scanned) has clear markings in paper sizes (A4 etc) along both the horizontal and vertical axes, so it is simply a matter of lining up your original item with the marks on the flatbed, closing the top of the machine, then pressing the "copy" button. A menu pops up on the LCD screen which is easy to understand and go through by means of the arrow buttons, enabling you to select the number of copies, size, quality etc. The print quality again is very good, both in colour and monochrome, even on the lowest level option (which is the one I most commonly use).
I have used the scanner a number of times, mainly for scanning in old photos or drawings done by the kids, and again the quality is very good. The images produced are very true to the original and because it is flatbed, you don't have any of those jarring lines which were so common on the old handheld scanners! In some cases you could argue the quality of scanning is a little bit too good, as even creases in the paper will sometimes show up, but these can easily be corrected in a software program such as photoshop after scanning. Again it is a simple matter to operate the scanner, you just press the scan button then navigate the easy to understand menu which allows you to scan the image as a number of different things and to different destinations, such as into an email application or image software, or just as a simple file to your PC/laptop.
We have only used the fax machine once, to send some documents for my dad (lol), but again this was easy to do even though I had never sent a fax before as the menus etc are clear and simple to understand.
A nice feature of this machine is its "power save" option, which allows it to "sleep" when not in use but still be available on demand. Nice to know we are chipping a little bit off our carbon footprint!
The machine is also fairly quiet when printing, which is something I know a lot of people want to know about this type of thing! So much so that if I have been engrossed in something on my PC (such as reading particularly fantastic Dooyoo reviews!) I have not even noticed it has started printing until someone comes along to collect what they have just printed out! I definitely don't think it is an obtrusive noise at all, although it isn't 100% silent it is about as quiet as you could expect an inkjet printer to be.
One minor moan I do have about this printer is that it uses rollers rather than a flat entry to get the paper in, meaning it is somewhat restricted on the types of card/paper it will allow to go through. We tried to put some 260GSM paper through it and it simply got stuck. This was particularly annoying as the paper pack had the Brother logo plastered all over it! We have ordered a sample pack of different thicknesses of paper to experiment with, so I will come back and update when we have a clearer idea of what will/won't go through it!
Another aspect I am less than happy with if I am honest is the overall design of the printer...I know its a terribly "girly" thing to say about a piece of technical machinery, but it really isn't very pretty to look at, very angular in shades of grey and bulky at that (although I suppose that is to be expected of an A3 capable machine!) Having said that, at least the matt finish doesn't collect fingerprints and dust like some of the glossy black machines we looked at in the shops, and the buttons are all clearly marked and large enough to be easy to use, so I suppose it is a case of practicality triumphing over aesthetics!
This is definitely an item you should shop around for if you are considering purchasing it; we got ours on offer in Staples and it was considerably cheaper than other advertised prices I have seen since. I have also seen it on sale or offer at other locations both on and offline, with savings of as much as £100, so it would definitely be worth investing a bit of time to check out different retailers offers.
I am not going to try to convince anyone that this is a bargain priced printer, but it is worth the money. It is packed full of features (see the technical info link), and has top notch performance and ease of use. The one thing I would complain about on the cost front is the cost of the replacement ink cartridges which are definitely not as cheap as other brands available, but having said that we bypassed this by buying one of those self-refill kits with a little syringe and topping up old cartridges rather than buying new ones every time. This does not work forever though as eventually the cartridges start to become worn and are no longer recognised by the printer so need replacing. Having said that, the quality of copies provided is second to none for an inkjet printer, and so I believe it is worth paying that little extra for both the machine itself and the inks required for it.
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Brother MFC 215C
by azumore
I bought this printer about 2 years ago. WHY? because of it's £40 price tag in my local retail park, that's very cheap, especially for that kind of price 2 years ago(start of 2008).
The unique thing about this product is that it has Print,Copy, Scan, photo printing and the extra Fax option.
It prints, copies, and scans ... very good, just like any other printer on the market. To be honest a few times i've printed about 100 pages ago, nothing went wrong.
The other thing I like about this printer, is that the printer paper is stored at the front of this printer also the printed copy comes out of the bottom layer of the front side as well. Unlike other printers the paper is stored at the back which feeds the paper in and comes out the front but which needs that little extra storage space.
The downsides are that if you want to print a photo, on A4 photo paper, then with my experiance is that the paper gets stuck, it is unable to bring the harder stiffer paper around and up from the back of the printer, so if you want to print photo's then I do not recommend you buying this product. The other downside is that the full set of ink cartridges are about £50 for the original inks made my brother. Yes you can get compatible inks which are cheaper. But I mastered another way which would save you alot of money, you can buy bottles of printer ink from local supermarkets. I bought a pack of colour inks which included the Magenta (pink), Yellow and Cyan (blue) bottles which cost about £7. Ialso bought a pack of black ink bottles which come in a pck of 3 for £7. Basically they provide a little screw which you use to make a hole at the top of the ink cartridge which you already have. And then just with a syringe which is provided you can suck up the ink from the bottle and inject it into the cartridge. You can fill your cartridges about 2 times atleast with each bottle of ink. Warning if you do get the ink on any textile it won't come off so watch it, and also wear gloves otherwise your hands will be stained for a couple of days.
The last and final thing about this printer is that after a year this message came up that it's time to clean it, so i looked in the manual and checked what the precedure is, it said you need to clean the insides with a solvent, which i did but still the message keeps on appearing, and since then I have been unable to print. The only thing you can do now is is scan and fax only. So I gave up on it and bought another printer.
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