Customer Reviews

Brother MFC-8840DN Network Multifunction Laser Printer

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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.

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.

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 --

Pro:

Fast copies and printing

Good image quality (though perhaps not quite up to standalone copy machine quality)

Good scanning ability

Con:

Paper tends to curl after going through impression

Unwieldy manual feed handler (awkward to change between letter size and envelope)

On 30th day, began printing black splotches at regular intervals--apparently from a drum in the process; I hadn't handled the drum, so this was apparently caused by the machine itself

Gets confused when multiple functions run concurrently

Annoying buzzers (e.g. when you open paper tray to put paper in)

High toner consumption

I am quite impressed with the MFC-8840DN.

It's loaded with useful features, and they all work.

The product is solidly designed, and there was obviously a lot of thought put into the mechanical design and control panel. The printed user manual is very good too.

The multipurpose tray is quite handy for keeping a few mailing envelopes or CD labels ready for printing at a moment's notice.

The duplexer has no problem doing two-sided printing, and there are options for straight through paper feeding and output.

The document feeder works well, and the software also handles using the flatbed scanner conveniently. If you don't use the document feeder, it prompts you for each page to be scanned on the flatbed.

I'm not using the fax at the moment, but that too has a multitude of useful features. If you do a lot of faxing, or have special fax applications this is worth looking at. You can do everything from fax relaying, broadcasting, and storing, to emailing faxes automatically to wherever you happen to be.

The network and software setup is in a separate manual, and may be a little intimidating, but everything works as advertised once you get it set up. If you want to use the scan buttons on the control panel, you will need to open some ports in the Windows Firewall. You can only register one computer to use the control panel scan buttons. The PC software scanning does work from multiple computers. You can buy a license if you need to have multiple computers appear in the control panel's scan button menu.

I ran into one annoying problem, but it isn't a big one.

There's a web browser interface that you can use to change the configuration. It sometimes freezes, and at that point I had to power cycle it to be able to use the web browser to configure it again. I don't expect to be changing the configuration a lot, and the problem happens infrequently.

This product supports an amazing number of network protocols, which makes it very useful for networks with a mixture of Apple, Windows, Unix, and other computers. About the only protocol it doesn't support is NETBIOS over IPX/SPX. That's a pretty unusual combination, but I did happen to be using it. I changed my configuration to NETBIOS over TCP/IP, and that is supported. NETWARE is supported with IPX/SPX protocol.

You can connect this to a 15 amp circuit, but don't be surprised if it dims the lights when you turn the power on. It's probably better to connect this to a 20 amp or 30 amp circuit. I had to relocate the printer because it was causing my UPS to detect a line voltage drop. That's really a problem with the UPS being too sensitive, but it's something to keep in mind if you have everything connected to the same circuit.

As a small business owner, I am always doing a lot of research on business machines. With that, I needed a reliable workhorse to manage my document flow.

Here are some things that work, and those that don't work so well. I'm going to start with the bad:

1) My biggest pet peeve is that printer companies can charge you $500 plus, but can't include a stinking USB cable!

2) The color scanning is not great, but many reviewers pointed that out. Personally I don't care; my color work is limited to pictures transferred from my wife's Fuji digital camera and a few color 35mm photos scanned in on a flatbed Epson multifuction center.

The good:

1) Vitually flawless set-up on our wireless network. One minor snafu was I forgot to disable the firewall prior to the install. Brother warns you of this, I ignored it.

2) I can't wait wait to scan my B/W work documents - my wife want's me to clean up my mounds of paper.

3) The Paperport software looks nice, although I am so used to using Adobe Acrobat Professional - perhaps I give this a whirl for the occassional color documents where I need the document feeder (e.g. multiple sheets).

4) Duplexing saves paper!

5) Excellent faxing capabilities!

6) Relatively unobtrusive footprint.

7) Fairly quiet!

Bottom line - buy it and you will not be sorry. If you need just a scanning solution, buy a dedicated sheet-fed scanner like the Fujitsu or Xerox. If you just need to print large volumes, buy a large HP printer. Want a good all around tool, buy this machine!

My wife and I are both Realtors, working primarily from our home office. We already have a nice color laser printer (Konica Minolta 2300W) but needed something to replace our aged HP printer/fax.

After a ton of research, I settled on the Brother MFC-8840DN. Connection to our home network was a snap. The scanner function works great, and I can send the scans directly from the unit to any of the computers on the network. Scan quality has been great, and the legal sized flatbed is a necessity when working with real estate documents. The printer has worked flawlessly, as has the fax (and tons of memory locations).

The low price of consumables (a 6,700 page toner cartridge costs about 60 bucks) was another factor in buying. Beware though, the unit ships with a toner cartridge with far lower capacity.

If you don't need color from your MFC, check this one out. We considered inkjet models, but the lower print quality and much higher ink costs made a b/w laser a better choice. This is a great printer, at an even better price!

I've owned this machine for over a year now, and have been absolutely thrilled with it - worth every penny. I have it set up on my home network through our wireless router, and my wife can print from her laptop, me from my desktop, and we have started to replace our three file cabinets with scanned materials straight onto my hard drive (with external backups, of course).

And nothing beats a decent copier and fax in your home office. This machine has really been a big time saver for us. Also a paper saver, since the automatic duplex printing works like a dream.

Setup was farily straight forward, although it might be a bit challenging for a computer newbie to set it up as a network printer. For a little while, I did have a weird problem with paper curling (using 24 lb laser paper), but this resolved by resetting the driver settings to thicker paper. (As for the VPN issue, I found all my items placed in the queue while on the VPN will print after I disconnect.)

One word of advice - once it says low toner, order more asap! Although you will have quite a while before you need the next toner unit, once it decides it's out, it will not print at all any longer. No faded pages, just no more printing - so have that replacement toner ready.

Buy this printer - you won't regret it.

Only had this for a few weeks, but so far I really like it. Very easy to set up, and I have set up the full print and scan software on a PC (WinME), and a Mac (OS X). I have the basic driver set up on my laptop (XP Pro) and set up my Linux box to use it. Printing is fastest from the Windoze machines; my Linux box goes through CUPS for printing, and the Mac behaves similarily (not surprising since it is *nix underneath). This 'universal' network printing access is important to me since I have so many different platforms. Since it is a network printer, my PC no longer grinds to a crawl when I print from it - it is nice when things work the right way!

Scanning works nicely and I am just learning to use the software to 'batch' scan. The automatic document feeder makes this activity SO much easier than my single sheet scan Epson.

The fact that this machine includes the ability to copy and print on BOTH sides of a sheet of paper (duplex) is just great for the kind of work I do. You pay a small penalty in copying/printing speed, but the feature is so handy you don't care.

Full blown printing from my windoze boxes is reasonably fast for a small home office printer - probably 12 pages a minute. Copying seems about that, too. While it is less than specs for the machine, I can assure that all vendors specs lie on this. It all 'depends' on what you print.

The machine includes a nifty fax, with lots of features including the ability to provide network faxing. I really don't fax much, and although the basic capability is great, the rest will be unused and unneeded features for me. If you are a heavy faxer, check out this machine (and it's related breathren) because it has a lot of nifty features.

I didn't give the printer 5 stars because I want to wait and see how it works over time; right now I think the 'lid' (cover?) that holds the ADF over the scanning surface seems flimsy. At least much more so than the lids on my old Xerox XD100 and my Epson CX5200. The 'guts' of the machine seem solid, and I plan on using the ADF as much as possible, so hopefully this will not be an issue.

The printer was easy to set up, is well built, and has lots of useful features. However, during the first few months, I got paper jams regularly - perhaps every five to ten pages. A couple of months ago, on a hunch, I switched to a heavier grade of paper and haven't had a jam since.

The only thing I wish it had (and I'm not sure how many fax machines offer this) is the ability to refuse faxes from a specific number, or only allow faxes from a specific number. Its a minor complaint and I am otherwise very happy with this machine.