Brother IntelliFAX 2820 Plain Paper Laser Fax

The requirement of basically any office now, is to have a fax machine. Not just any fax machine either, but one that can handle a large load of work, and can do so with ease. Nobody wants to waste time trying to figure out the fax machine, or spend hours going through a manual just to find that it takes a ton of steps to send one out each time. That is part of the reason that I went out and purchased the Brother Intellifax 2820 Plain Paper Laser Fax Machine. The other part of the equation was that this particular model could do a lot of the tricks that I wanted to have in a fax machine. Paramount to that was its ability to print out a confirmation sheet each time that a fax was sent to someone. This was to insure that we knew whether it had been received or not, and it meant that we had less worry about the transmission process itself. I will mention shortly some of the other reasons that we went with the 2820.

The Brother Intellifax 2820 is one of a great line of Brother Fax machines. This particular model is built with a telephone handset, a speakerphone, and one touch dialing that can hold up to 200 locations. There is an easy to use keypad on the front of the machine where you can dial a fax very easily, have the other end pick up, and submit the transmission in less than 10 seconds of time. The auto document feeder holds up to 20 pages, so you can set your document on the feeder, dial the number, and walk away while your fax is being sent. The modem speed is at 14.4K bps with a top transmission speed of 6 seconds per page. That is pretty quick if you ask me, so if you walk up with 20 pages, you can expect to come back in around 2 to 3 minutes and find your fax has already been sent. This is enough time to go for a cup of coffee, and you walk away with no worries of the Brother 2820 jamming while in the process.

The paper capacity of this machine is 250 sheets, which slide easily into the tray at the front bottom of the machine. If by chance the paper runs out while a fax is incoming, the machine has 8MB of built in memory that will store any transmissions until you refill the drawer. This means you can have up to 500 incoming pages that are waiting to print, meaning that you will never have to worry about missing a fax due to paper shortage. This also comes into play if you are waiting for a confirmation sheet, because the machine is smart enough to remember that it needs to give one once it has paper to work with. If you are thinking that you want to prepare a fax to send but don't want to send it out just yet, you can also use the machine to scan it into that memory for a later time. This works at a rate of about 3.5 seconds per page, and makes it so easy to remember if you have sent a fax or not. This is because you can print out a transaction page that denotes the last X amount of time and shows all of the faxes sent during that time.

As I said, the fax will give you a confirmation page of submission, but there are also a few bonuses that you can get with that sheet. The Brother 2820 has the capabilities of putting an image of your fax on the confirmation page. This will show you exactly what you have sent, and can be worked with to a size that you want. That means you can have more than one page show up as a picture on that confirmation sheet. It's not a necessity, but a nice little bonus for having this machine. Coupled with that, is the ability of the 2820 to make copies for you, so if for some reason your copy machine breaks down, you can just use the fax machine to do it for you. It can do about 15 copies per minute, which is really nice in the pinch. The machine always gives a nicely legible printout and does so with such speed that you won't know how you lived with a slower machine. It has a USB interface which runs at up to 1200 x 600 dpi resolution. If you like your prints lighter or darker, there are also 64 scales that you can adjust the outputs to adhere to.

The Brother Intellifax 2820, is exactly what it sounds like; an intelligent fax machine. It knows exactly what you want from it, and it is so easy to work with, that this is right around being one of the best machines I have worked with. It also doesn't take up too much space, measuring in at about 15 inches wide, about 15 inches deep, and about 10 inches tall. It weighs just over 16 pounds, so you can move it around the office to just the right spot as well. We were able to pick this one up for less than $200.00 on special from Office Depot, and I was really glad that I went with this choice. After looking around for a while, and deciding upon what we wanted the machine to do, this was the best option out there for the money. It was a snap to set up, and if you think you might have any trouble, it comes with a sticker on the front to run a quick demonstration of its use.

The machine comes with a one year warranty too, so don't worry about hurting the machine if you aren't completely sure what you are doing. Regarding extra expenses you will have to pay for the paper as it doesn't come with any, but it does come with a 1,500 page toner cartridge. Keep in mind though that the number of pages is usually measured at less than 1/2 a page of ink, so if you are printing out very dark images replacement could be needed earlier. If you are in the market for a fax machine and know that you want one which is both intelligent to use, and easy to work with, then I highly recommend the Brother Intellifax 2820 to you. This could be a great fax machine for either home or office use, and can probably be picked up at any office store.



A Couple of Other Tools That Could Be Useful To Your Office:


A Great Office Shredder: The Ativa DX120P

A Nice External Hard Drive: Western Digital 160 GB Hard Drive

A Great Space Saving Computer: Dell OptiPlex GX520 Desktop PC