I found the PERFECT printer! Part 3 - Delivery and playing!

1/25/2008 4:34:37 AM	I found the PERFECT printer! Part 3 - Delivery and playing!
musikman1 Erlanger, KY age: 50	Online ordering experience: ONSALE.COM: I placed the order on "Black Friday" (Day after Tnxgiving) at 9:00pm, promised 7-10 days, printer actually arrived in 2 days, Monday 8:30am, dropshipped from their distributor, TechData in FL. (I'm in Cincy area.) As you can see from the specs, the MFC 9840CDW comes with everything except the oral sex attachment, and I have THAT on back order. There are actually only TWO additional options that are offered for purchase: Extra 500 sheet paper tray (List: $239, I paid $125) Memory: There is a single memory slot that can hold 64MB up to 512MB SODIMM card for a max total of 640MB of memory. Brother doesn't sell them, the give the specs. I found the memory at an online memory place, cost for the 512MB SODIMM was $69.00. TONER/CONSUMABLES COSTS: (Priced at google shopping) Standard: (Printer ships with full standard carts) TN110BK (Black, 2500 pages) $55 TN110C/M/Y (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, 1500 pages) $55 Hi Yield: TN115BK (Black, 5000 pages) $69 TN115C/M/Y (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, 4000 pages) $85 DR110CL (Drum Unit, 17K pages)$125 BU100CL (Belt Unit, 50K pages)$82 MY EXPERIENCE: What a dream machine! Quiet, quick, EASY TO OPERATE!! This is my first color laser printer, and the setup was a snap, just follow the manual, takes about 20 minutes from setup to test print. RE: Easy to operate Three big buttons on the front, FAX, SCAN, COPY. Two start buttons: COLOR, B/W Big LCD readout for menus/options/etc. Connection: I have it set up on my network via TCP/IP (DHCP), no direct computer connection, so you don't have to have the "connected computer" powered up.. Easy, quick setup, worked the first time! I didn't try the WIFI, but I would expect it to be as competent as the rest of the machine. RE: Computer The printer appears as three devices on the Network Places/Printers-FAX: Printer, Scanner and FAX. Printing was easy from the wired desktops and the WIFI laptops. Fast computer to printer, fast printing, GREAT print quality. RE: Color as good as an Inkjet? Damn near, but close enough for proofs and up to 8x10 "Laser Photo" paper. The $49.00 inkjet will still print more brilliant pics, but it's definately a question of degrees! LASERNOMICS 101-LASER TONER VS. INKJET CARTRIDGES, $$ and .02: My HP PhotoSmart 7160 inket/photo printer gets max about 70 8x10 or 120 4x6 prints or 150 "regular print" pages (in my experience) with a set of ink carts @ $35.00 per full cartridge set (5 color, one black in a combo box for $35). For the purposes of this exercise, we'll call it 150 pages. MFC 9840CDW Hi Yield Cartridge set: BLK = $69, CYM = $85, full set would run $324 for 4000 pages. Inkjet costs for 4000 pages (4000/150=26 x $35 = $910), not counting, say, 20 trips to the store, 20 installations, and wet copies/prints, etc. Also, if you don't print for a month, toner doesn't clog or dry up and become unusable. Whatta deal! Rick
1/31/2008 1:31:36 PM	I found the PERFECT printer! Part 3 - Delivery and playing!
marc2b4 Michigan, ND age: 46	Rick, I use two printers here at home. I run a Kodak 5300 Multifunction for normal printing stuff; it's fine for what I use it for. For photographic prints, I use a Kodak Professional XL 1400 Dye-Sub printer, that's fantastic. The best laser printer I've ever used or seen is the Xerox 7750, I had two of those in my facility at Grand Forks AFB. We also had 4 Xerox 6300 printers, and they were great too. For inkjet printers, I don't think Epson can be beaten. Despite all the claims from the HP people, Epson really developed the technology and their stuff is superior to anything I've seen. The only thing that comes close is in the large format area, Lasermaster is an outstanding poster printer. I've dealt with them all, and have checked them all out. For RIPs, I think that Colorburst is the most cost effective software RIP on the market, if you've got an old workstation it's easily convertible to a dedicated RIP that frees up your system while your artwork is being printed. Brother is OK, but as I remember isn't it based on either a Sinko or Matsushita print engine? I'm probably wrong, but that's what I remember. M
2/5/2008 9:32:24 PM	I found the PERFECT printer! Part 3 - Delivery and playing!
musikman1 Erlanger, KY age: 50	Heya Marc! The Brother is NOT going to compete with any sort of professional printing hardware. It's just a great solid workhorse for a home office, small business, classroom, etc. The REASON I have it (I'm a diehard HP Laser fan) is that it's the ONLY mid-priced printer on the market with COLOR laser, copying, FAX, scanning with a 50 sheet auto doc feeder and AUTOMATIC DUPLEXING. Believe it or not (and I have LOOKED!) HP doesn't offer anything multifunction Color Laser with duplexing. EVEN as an additional cost add on! And I've been looking for 10 years! I have a "mini" version of your setup. I have a Brother 9840 in the office, an HP Laserjet 2220dn in the music studio, and an HP Photosmart 7180 in the family room for photos. I agree with you, the Xerox Phasers do great output! The "toner blocks" or whatever they are called give darned near dye-sub output quality. My "dink" on Xerox is the cost of consumables and the horrible track record for service and reliability. My "service complaints" come from working with school systems that have purchased the Xerox printers by the 100's, and have them covering like 200,000 seats. It's really great to be able to get "reports from the field" from users on a large scale. It's much better than a guy that bought one and it didn't work. These guys are reporting up to 50% failure rate over the first three years of usage, and really high $$ service contracts that aren't necessarily providing "service." Rick
2/9/2008 8:00:56 AM	I found the PERFECT printer! Part 3 - Delivery and playing!
marc2b4 Michigan, ND age: 46	Rick, My experience with Xerox printers was the exact opposite. I was the first one in the squadron to bring in Xerox printers, and we had absolutely no problems with them. I bought a three year maintenance agreement with them for our 7700 at first, and later the 7750, anyway, we had a color shift after about a year with the 7700. Couldn't find what had caused it, so I called Xerox. They were out there within 4 hours, diagnosed the problem, a bad toner feed, and replaced the whole system and put in new cartridges. They stayed until about 7:00 that night until I was satisfied. One thing I have noticed with the Xerox printers is that you can't use cheap papers. I found for us, it was better to by the Xerox papers and we never had a feed problem or any jamming whatsoever. The Operations Group commander was so impressed with our system he bought one for his office. After 3 months they were getting all sorts of feed and jamming problems. They were pilots so the took the easy and cheap solution; paper is paper, doesn't matter what we put into it. So the exec called me, I went over with the proper paper, cleaned out the system and reset the color and feed info, then I chewed out the pilots who were trying to save 2.00 on a 500 sheet ream of paper. Told the Colonel what the problem was, gave them the web site at Xerox and told them to buy only the Xerox paper, and they never had another problem. I can't say enough good things about the Xerox professional printers, they were outstanding for me and my workcenter. When I retired, a few other offices in the squadron had bought Xerox printers and were very happy with them. For a networked printer, I don't think you can beat them. I had a Canon CLC 1000 and we got rid of it after about two months with the 7700, just no comparison in the quality and reliability. I would never buy another Canon system again. My two cents worth, and it's my story, so I'm sticking too it! Take care. Mark

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