I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

And Something I Do Like - The Brother MFC-5890CN

Last week when I wrote about the Verizon debacle I promised I’d write about something I actually do like, and I am.  I meant to faster than I did - last Friday was 6 months since my Dad unexpecteddly passed away, and coupled with Father’s Day this past weekend, I wasn’t in the best of places to write anything coherent.  But it’s a new day, a new week, and I do have something I’ve been meaning to write about - not directly financially related although in our case, it is a money saving device.

I was contacted a few months ago by a representative for Brother, asking me if I’d like to review one of their all in one printer/fax/scanner/copier machines, the Brother MFC-5890CN.  I get a number of offers to review things and I usually don’t accept because I’m not all that into writing reviews, but in this case, I think my spouse would have cried if I didn’t say yes.  We have to fax a number of documents each month for our Flexible Spending Account, and usually that means I have to go to our local copy shop and pay them to fax them for me.  It isn’t a huge expense, but it is a recurring one that’s nice to eliminate.  In the spirit of full disclosure, in exchange for writing an honest review of the all-in-one printer (not positive or negative, just what I honestly think), I get to keep it.  Yahoo! 

And honestly, I think it is pretty cool.   I’ve only ever had a printer before, so I didn’t know what I would think.  Some background information about the all-in-one printer:  as I said before, it prints, faxes, copies, and scans, as well as direct photo capture from a memory card.  It prints up to 11″x17″ paper for both photos and documents, and there is an auto feeded on top that feeds up to 50 sheets for scanning, copying or faxing.

Some of the things I just love about it:  scanning.  Oh, the scanning.  I can scan documents into PDFs, I can scan pictures into JPGs, and it does it pretty fast.    I also really like that where the paper comes out is basically right under the machine, so it doesn’t shoot out into the room, and takes up no more extra horizontal space.  The machine is sort of large to begin with, so this feature really helps save space on my desk.  The quality of pictures, both scanned and printed, has been very good for me.  And I am happy with the ease and speed that it both prints and copies, especially color.  The black and white does seem a tad slow to me, but the color more than makes up for that.  And it is pretty simple to use - there are big buttons on the front to change functions, which is good for me since I am not a big doirection-reader. 

A few things I am not as fond of:  the pages when I print come out in the order printed, meaning that my documents are in reverse order.  There may be a setting to reverse that, but I couldn’t find it. Also, setting up the fax was a bit complicated and tim-consuming.  We did get it to work, and there is even a place you can fax to verify it is working, but it took my spouse a few tries to get things right.  Lucky for me, my spouse sets things up.  :)  These are small things in thebig picture, but things that annoyed me.

All in all, I’m pleased by the device, and I am excited to never have to pay for faxing again.  Compared to our previous inkjet printer, this one is pretty slick, and the cartridges are much less expensive.  It does have 4 cartridges though, not two, so I am sure that factors in somewhere, depending on how fast they run out.  But if you want a printer that scans, faxes, copies, and does it all quietly and efficiently, look into this one in your search.  It is pretty nifty.  And now I am going to play with it some more, I have copying to do!

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