Networked color printer, scanner, and fax that's OK for occassional use

Given that I have a Samsung laser that I use for everyday printouts, I needed something to do color. Also, I was sick of having to photocopy materials for work so I decided to get a unit that has a scanner with a document feeder.

After a little research I came upon the Brother 440CN. From a hardware standpoint it's a nice unit and I like the theory of separate ink cartridges. However, I know better than to use this as my everyday printer. Instead, I use it to print the occasional color page or to do scanning. It makes perfect sense for that kind of work. I would not use it for daily printouts because it's not that fast and like all inkjet printers, its cost per page can't come near a laser.

I noticed one problem when printing on slightly thicker paper (cardstock). The back plate that keeps the paper against rollers would get a bit loose and the paper would jam or misfeed. After printing a few dozen sheets I had to reach in and make sure that the backplate was still in place as otherwise it would start having paper feeding problems.

The bonus with this is that it hooks up to the network and all functions are available over the network. I'm able to print, scan, and fax from any one of my PC's including one running Vista. In fact, hats off to Brother for having Vista drivers in March 2007 when I got my Vista desktop! HP took at least through summer of 2007 to update their all-in-one drivers to work with Vista, but I guess that's history...

Since the device sits connected to the network, it doesn't have to be right by my computer. Instead, it can sit anywhere a network connection can be dropped, although it's not wireless, so a network wire has to follow it. The drivers on the Brother website make setup quite easy, even for the network device.

Printing wise the quality is fine. I use it to print high quality inkjet CD labels and they come out as well as on a Canon "photo" printer. It's not the fastest, but that's the trade off with these all-in-one machines.

Ink costs are average, definitely comparable to HP. A three-pack of colors is $35, which is how much an HP 23 cartridge costs. However, with the HP cartridge you need to replace it when one color gets used up, with this printer you can replace each color by itself. My only hope would be that the black printer cartridge be bigger than the color cartridges since that gets used more. It doesn't bother me that much since I don't use this to print lots of black and white text (that's what the laser printer is for).

I got it for its scanning features too. I bypass the Brother software, and just use the Twain scanner driver to import scans into Acrobat Professional. It scans about 5 pages per minute using b&w 300 dpi, which is definitely acceptable. Having the flatbed scanner is also very nice when it comes to scanning of uneven sized-originals or getting a page out of a book. The combination of Acrobat with the scanner in the device is really great.

Lastly, I know the printer comes with a 'dedicated' tray for 4x6 photo paper. However, this is not that useful since you have to remember to move the paper tray yourself and the printer has no means to detecte if the 4x6 tray is in place. As such, before printing anything it's important to make sure that the tray is in the correct position as otherwise a 4x6 sheet will get wasted or plain paper will be fed instead of the 4x6. This little add on tray would have been immensely more useful if the printer had a 5 cent sensor to tell if the tray is in position and refuse to print on 4x6 paper if it's a letter-sized job. Oh well.