Brother MFC-8840DN Network Multifunction Laser Printer

by Brother

Product Details

• Item Weight: 39.9 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 52 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B0001ZRKRU
• Item model number: MFC8840DN
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 31, 2004

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The Brother MFC-8840DN multifunction laser printer offers fast printing, up to 21 ppm (draft); crisp resolution, up to 2,400 x 600 dpi; plus great copy, scan, and fax performance. A complete range of easy-to-use front-mounted controls facilitates easy walk-up single-job use, while Ethernet connectivity accommodates workgroup sharing.

With versatile paper handling, the MFC-8840DN performs two-in-one and four-in-one copying, automatic duplexing, poster copying, and reduction/enlargement options from 25% to 400% in 1% increments. It also has a 50-sheet ADF for even greater convenience.

The MFC-8840DN offers your choice of Ethernet (10/100BaseTX), USB (2.0), and parallel connectivity, and is PC and Mac compatible. Fax features include a built-in 33.6 Kbps modem, 300 speed dial locations, 40 one-touch dialing locations, and more. The MFC-8840DN also allows access via PC fax interface.

What's in the Box
MFC-8840DN, ADF, power cable, AC power adapter, Quick Reference Guide, CD (software), warranty information

Product Description

Brother MFC-8840DN Network Multifunction Laser Printer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great printer, does it all!!, September 12, 2004

By 

D. Strickland (Northern CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brother MFC-8840DN Network Multifunction Laser Printer (Office Product)

After doing a lot of research for multi-function printers I selected this printer and love it! I wanted a laser since it's cheaper to maintain (no $$$ ink cartridges) and didn't really need color (since I have a very nice photo printer for the rare times I want to print in color). I love the duplex mode (double side printing) to save paper and it'll automatically print 'n' pages to one physical page which is also handy. I have it networked between my computer and my husband's so we both can use it. (DSL connection with separate Linksys router and DSL modem.)

All wasn't 100% rosey at first.... I connected it via my network and it worked great but due to a problem using it while connected via VPN to my employer, I decided to use the USB connection (when I was on VPN I couldn't see the printer). I got all features working fine except for the scanning (it wouldn't scan at all). After reading so many bad reviews of Brother's tech support I was leary to call them but after many reinstalls w/o luck, I finally called them. The support folks were GREAT!! I ended up calling twice; one for help uninstalling the network drivers and again for a scanning problem. The second call I was on the phone for almost an hour and they found a patch (from Scansoft) to my original VPN problem as well as a registry patch (from Microsoft) for the USB scanning problem. The fix for the uninstall problem was because I had to log in as Administrator not just be in the admin group (I'm running Win2k) so that's why I couldn't completely switch from network connection to USB (the network drivers were still partially installed). In both calls, the tech support folks were helpful, pleasant, and knowledgeable.

The only remaining problem is configuring the fax with an answering machine. The manual has a lot of info but their explanation of the features for the fax isn't all that clear. Right now I don't need the fax much so I'll wait a bit and call tech support back again later.

I love this printer, I like that it has all the features I need in one nicely packaged unit, and for a change, I have good things to say about a company's tech support. (Every company says customers are number one, but only a tiny % actually mean it.)

Other reviewers have complained about the included scanning software (Paperport 8.0 SE from Scansoft) but so far so good, it works ok for me. I haven't tried the OCR feature though but supposedly it'll let me scan pure-text documents for later edits (like in Word) as well as let me search for docments by providing words inside of the document (not just file name which isn't too useful).

I ended up purchasing this printer at PCuniverse (free shipping and no sales tax) for the same price listed here. The reviews of the MFC 8840 printers in Amazon were a great help in selecting which printer to purchase.

47 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars almost there for macs, September 4, 2004

By 

Joshua Schwarz "post josh" (nyc) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Brother MFC-8840DN Network Multifunction Laser Printer (Office Product)

i bought this unit hoping it would replace my separate fax machine, printer & copier. for the most part i'm very impressed. the print quality is very good the fax machine is excellent and because it's a flatbed scanner, it's very easy to use it a photocopier as well. i'm have a mostly mac network and the printeing is fine from both os 9.2 and os 10.3 as well as win xp. the install software is a little barbaric in that it doesn't really let you know what it's installing or give you the option to install just some of the components, the software install directions were all but worthless, but anyone with some mac experience will figure it out. the installer worked ok and left a text file log of where it put things. one nice thing is that you don't have to use the brother printing extension (driver). it works fine with the standard apple laserwriter extention. however the brother drivers might be a little faster and they had some more printer options. also, under os x, it does support rendezvous for printing which makes network setup a snap!

my major gripes are that it doesn't support network scanning via ethernet for the mac ( i think it does on pc). you have to run a separate usb cable. annoying, my biggest gripe is that the scanning twain driver is really lame. i couldn't get it to work under os 9. it does work in os x, but it doesn't have a descreen option. even though the scan quality is excellent, you will be stuck with a moire pattern on anything that is halftone like books, magazines and newspapers! unacceptable. if brother put a little more software effort into the mac side of things they would have a killer product for that market. but as it stands now, you have to run a separate cable for scanning and buy something like the extensis descreen (intelliscan $99) photoshop plugin to fix the moire problem. i'm under the impression that the pc software is more developed, but i haven;'t tested it for anything except network printing which works fine.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Brilliant, May 4, 2005

By 

CompuGeek (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brother MFC-8840DN Network Multifunction Laser Printer (Office Product)

I would give this device 6 stars if I could!! The Brother 8840-DN scans documents to PDFs at a rate comparable to the much more expensive Xerox Documate at nearly half the price. Plus you get a lightning fast copying machine, a fast fax, a network printer and a flatbed scanner. What an amazing product!!! I did a good deal of research prior to purchasing this machine, and almost cancelled the order based on some last minute that I read. (Luckily I changed my mind.) PC world said it scanned documents rediculously slowly, taking 33 seconds to at 100 dpi. This turned out to be absolutely NOT true!!! I managed to get through a stack of fifty documents at 300dpi in less than 120 seconds, and that includes creating the pdfs. (I am running an AMD64 3000+ with 1 GB of ram). The print quality is about average for a laser printer- it is nothing compared to the ultra-crisp text of the Minolta Color laser Engine (I also own a Minolta Magicolor 2350EN Color laser) but for less than half the price, I have no complaints. The network connectability is an added bonus. I can scan and even fax from my computer (without printing a hardcopy first) -all remotely. If you purchase this item, make sure to upgrade to the max 160 Mb of RAM (128 Mb DIMM available from crucial for 50 bucks) as this speeds things up even more.

I would recommend the Brother 8840DN to anyone looking for a well built and designed MFC device, and would take all the unjustified negative comments with a grain of salt.

Enjoy --