A nice laser all-in-one

Due to my husband's work, the printer in our home office gets a lot of use, and many of the pages he prints are full-color maps. For the past four years, we had an HP color inkjet all-in-one, with which we were very happy. It seemed, however, that it was going through ink faster and faster, and we decided that it was time to look for a color laser all-in-one machine.

After reading many reviews, we decided on a Brother MFC-9440CN color laser all-in-one. At the time of purchase, this was a just-released machine, but it had received good reviews from CNet. The price was in our range, and it had all the functions we needed--networkable color laser printing, scanner, fax, and copier with automatic document feeder. We didn't need any other bells or whistles.

Now, let me say that I am not a tech guru, so this review will not address technicalities like speed, memory, and so forth. I will, however, address real-life use of this product.

The box arrived and required two of us to carry and unpack it, although handles cut into the box made it more convenient. The machine is big and heavy, but (if this makes any sense) was not as tall as I'd imagined it would be from my research.

Setup was a breeze; the manuals were detailed and software went on effortlessly and within just a few minutes the machine was up and running on our wireless network. The only problem I encountered was that one line in the manual didn't match up with what I saw on the screen (it had to do with registering via fax) so I ended up calling Brother to get the product registered.

We've been very pleased with the printing. It's fast and of good quality. I've printed out full-page photos and scrapbook pages with good results. After the initial few seconds of warm-up time, the pages spit out of the machine very quickly, even with full-color prints.

The document feeder works well for copies and for scanning. One of my favorite features is plugging in a USB storage device and scanning documents right to it and then transferring them to another machine.

There is a pictbridge port but I was unable to get it to print anything other than full-page copies. This may have to do with my camera's settings rather than the printer's, though.

Color copies are not quite as good. I printed a photo on the printer and then copied it on the MFC-9440CN and on our HP6110 inkjet; the inkjet made very good copies while the MFC was not as clear.

We've been using more toner than we'd anticipated, but we have printed many many full-color pages so I guess I shouldn't expect it to last as long as the approximates given by the manufacturer. I have not seen the toner cartridges in our (limited) local stores, so I order them online. Fortunately, ample warning is given when a toner color is low and we've had several days to get a new one ready. Once a toner cartridge is empty, the machine stops altogether until it is replaced.

Replacing cartridges is easy and instructions come with each cartridge. The used cartridges can be sent postage-paid to Brother for recycling using a label printed from Brother's website.

The one problem we've had with the machine is that I'd be in the middle of a phone call and the fax machine would break in and make the screechy fax-receiving noises. This was especially odd since we don't have call-waiting. I figured out how to cancel it, but it was beginning to happen more and more often.

I called Brother's contact line and was told that I had the machine in the wrong mode. (Apparently I had misunderstood the instructions and you can only have the machine in "manual" mode under certain circumstances, such as having voicemail on your phone line.) I was instructed to put the machine on "TAD" mode and to change my answering machine to 2 or 3 rings.

Now, this is a problem for me. Since this is a home first and foremost with an office within it, I don't always get to the phone in two rings. (My answering machine only has options for 2 or 4.) The Brother representative said that this is the only option I have if I'm going to use my answering machine. Setting the machine on 4 rings, I "may not" receive my faxes.

When I protested that this was going to be a problem for me, she told me she couldn't do anything about it, as her job is just to trouble-shoot. My "but my HP could handle faxes with my answering machine set to 4 rings" was met with "We're not HP." I suggested that she could pass along my unhappiness to others (customer service, programmers, product development people, etc.) who actually could do something about it, and she said that she does not have that capability. When I asked for a number to call customer service myself, I was told that there is no line for customers to call and voice their complaints. All the calls are monitored and recorded, so there's a chance that someone "might" catch our conversation, but that's the best chance I have.

So, at this point, I'm happy enough with the machine except for the fax setup limitations, but I'm very disappointed that a major company like Brother does not give its representatives the capability to pass along customer suggestions, nor does it have an actual customer service line that goes beyond technical support.

UPDATE 1/5/08: I've made two more calls to customer service with mixed results. Ultimately, I learned that I can leave my answering machine on 4 rings, and I can pick up the phone to answer calls normall. If I hear the fax tones, I can just hang up and it will switch to the phone. If we're not home, it will pick up the fax automatically (and we did test this successfully yesterday). I'm still disappointed in the customer service; I received conflicting information from the first two reps I spoke with, but the third one was very helpful, gave me accurate information, and followed up with e-mail instructions of what we discussed on the phone. I'm hoping this will clear up the problems and I can go back to being happy with the machine.