Brother MFC-8480DN High-Performance Laser All-in-One with Networking and Duplex Printing

5 comments

1. 

   S. Chatterjee on December 20, 2009 at 9:38 pm

   This is the most suitable unit for our small business. It is efficient and convenient exactly to the level that was required for our office. The quality, speed and options of printing, scanning and faxing are perfectly suited for our purpose. It serves all our office needs.

2. 

   G. Gunn on December 20, 2009 at 9:53 pm

   this is a great copier overall, but it lacks the function of copying from two-sided to two-sided documents. i’d like to change it to the one that does has that function, then i probably will have to pay for the shipping.
   

3. 

   Doug Matulewic on December 20, 2009 at 11:08 pm

   I bought this because I needed a standalone Multi function printer. I wanted something that will print from a network, scan to email or a network file, and copy and fax.

   The good:
   
   It prints, and prints fast.

   The bad:
   
   The software isn’t very good… all I want are print drivers. Also the manual is useless, as it just repeats the words that appear in the configuration screenshot. It doesn’t explain how to set it up.

   The ugly:
   
   Brother claims this will scan to email… well… that’s false… it actually scans to Outlook email client. Meaning it needs to be directly connected to a computer with the software installed… and when you go to the unit to scan to email, your Outlook opens up with an email ready for you to send. (Of course the manual says to scan to email (Server), you need a different product)
   
   I also tried to setup Scan to Network, but couldn’t get it to work. I called Brother International support, and found that it is a known issue and no fix is yet available. ???

   So in summary… it does NOT scan-to-email, it really scans-to-Outlook. It does NOT scan-to-network, as Brother states that it doesn’t work.
   
   The configuration setup is very confusing, the manual tells you how to setup features that this model doesn’t support.

4. 

   William R. Parker Jr. on December 21, 2009 at 12:38 am

   It will not copy legal documents (only copies first 8.5″ of document) and has jammed on us three times in two days with very little use. Brother could not troubleshoot the product by phone… and believes it may be a faulty machine. Error history logged that we printed out shows old dates on the error list, which may indicate it is a refurbished machine, although it was represented at a new machine.

   We purchased this unit back in August and just put it into service this past week… just a few days past the return period for Amazon. We did not use it right away because we were opening a new office and just got it opened 10/1/09. I would have thought Amazon could have made an exception in this case, but says we will be charged a restocking fee if returned. They could easily work this out if they really wanted to help out a good customer who has purchased a LOT of items from them.

   This machine is junk and Brother’s warranty coverage is pitiful. They are requiring we take it to a service center that is an hour away. So… not only are we going to have to spend our own money to get it to a service center, we are going to be without the machine until they can get it fixed and we will have to spend more money and time to go back and pick it up. So much for the little bit of money we saved.

   At this moment, I am none too satisfied with Brother or Amazon. I will NEVER buy another Brother product and it will be a while before I buy another item from Amazon. They will lose more than they profited on this machine before I shop with them again.

5. 

   B. Bauer on December 21, 2009 at 3:09 am

   I gave 4 stars instead of 5 for the following reasons:
   
   1) Scanning from the ADF is slower than I expected once you get past the first page.
   
   2) The printer memory can be easily upgraded with up to 512 MB. However, the memory module is a 144-pin PC100/133 SO-DIMM. This is very out of date memory. You would think that out of date memory would be dirt cheap but it is not. Compare prices and you will find that it costs about as much as 4 GB of the very latest memory because very few manufacturers still produce it and very few retailers stock it. Even if that memory is more than adequate for the printer’s needs, Brother should still use something more modern to keep the costs down.

   ——————–
   
   I have a network with machines running Windows Vista, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, and Ubuntu 9.04 Linux. This printer worked with all three operating systems with no tweaking at all. In fact, the only headache was that the Windows software provided by Brother required a reboot after installing (I thought we left Windows 95 far behind…). The Mac immediately recognized the printer via Rendezvous and was ready to print within seconds. What surprised me the most, however, was that Linux saw the printer and configured itself right away. Brother offers Linux drivers, but there is no point in even downloading the print drivers as CUPS handles it out of the box. For scanning, you should install the Brother “driver” which is actually just a very tiny daemon that the printer contacts when you press the scanning button. All the daemon does is kick off the appropriate shell script, which are located in /etc/local/Brother/sane. It is all very configurable and if you know your scripting, this printer is MORE capable on Linux than it is on Mac or Windows!