Thanks, missed that. Glad to get some direct confirmation that newer model is pretty good.

And speaking of which:
I've never seen the scanner crap out first, either, although to get one with a good scanner you are still paying a bit of a premium for the scanner.

There are pretty good scanners which are small enough to keep in a drawer when not in use; one of these days I want a really good higher-volume document scanner, but for now this one does really well:
Brother ADS1500W Compact Color Desktop Scanner with Duplex and Web Connectivity
I paid a little less for it than it goes for now, but it was still pricier than the B&W multifunctions so it really only makes sense in combination with already having two perfectly good laser printers.

Glad I'm not alone. Printer now junked and replaced with a Samsun 430. Does what we need and works with Google Cloud Print.

I have one of this model too and have been very happy with it. Agree on the colour printing expense, but as I seldom need colour printing I turn it off and just print in B&W for almost all daily use. I don't need receipts/boarding passes etc in colour! You can get a larger black toner, as well as printing in reduced ink mode.

It is wifi and airprint compatible so I can print on my network as well as from my phone and ipad etc.

Another vote for the Brother MFC-9340CDW. It's amazing.

Thanks again to all for contributing to this thread. Brother seems to have quite a following around here. I will go over to the Brother website and check out what they have.

It does make me a little sad that HP seems to have flushed a good portion of their brand down the drain.....

Yeah, Carly Fiorina was a disastrous CEO...but HP had problems before her too. My parents have a Brother MFP that has never given them any trouble in 6+ years.

The trouble with beancounters started long before Fiorina.

The thing is beancounter damage is slow--the company coasts on it's good reputation for a while so they think it's working.

From a laser-printer-quality perspective, the trouble started under her. The last really good series of laser printers they came out with (the original laserjet 4000/8000 series) were one of the first to come out with under her tenure, and based on the costcutting their immediate successors had (e.g the 4100s) it seems likely they were in response to her changes.

Their PC division was already producing cr*ppy machines before Fiorina, as was the consumer half of Compaq's before the merger.

I wasn't blaming Carly or anyone else..... I remember HP being more expensive than anything comparable, but the historic quality and service was the difference. I was always happy to pay more because back then, you got what you paid for.

I guess the recent industrial paradigm has, to a certain extent, a build in concept of less durability to "force" consumers to upgrade their stuff in shorter periods of time....?

I think what's happened is consumers have become so price-conscious that it's the cheap stuff that sells.

I've had a Brother MFC9120CN since 2011 (was around $300 at the time, far, far less now) and it is still working perfectly. Fast, reliable, just really nothing to complain about.


Oh yeah, had HP and Lexmark machines before (keep in mind that this is 2009-2010 ) and they were absolute garbage. Brother has been excellent.

Planned obsolescence through discontinued software support is just as effective. Surely you have heard of people who buys a new computer or device with the latest version of the operating system, but can't print to their printer because the maker did not release drivers for the new operating system.

You can avoid this pitfall by looking for standard printer language support in printers. PCL and Postscript are the two major printer languages. All operating system released in the last two decades should have generic PCL and Postscript drivers built-in. If your printer maker did not make a driver for your operating system you will still be able to use the generic drivers to print, although without the bells and whistles.

Most laser printers support PCL and Postscript. One exception I have found are the lower end Canon laser MFP that do not support PCL or Postscript.

Most inkjets are use your host to render the printout and do not support PCL or Postscript. The exception being the higher end HP OfficeJets which do.

That's once nice thing about newer MFCs -- you typically these days don't need drivers. Scanner driver obsolescence has been particularly annoying on Windows, and being able to just scan via a web interface or scan directly to email/google drive with no driver software on my PC is a huge improvement.

Ditto on photo printers; I got really annoyed when I realized my semi-new Canon photo printer wouldn't work with Windows 8.x/10 -- I'd BOUGHT the little 4x6 dye sub job because the prior one (from 2002) wouldn't work with Windows 7 64-bit.

Then I realized it could print directly from jpegs on a USB key on an SD card. Much easier!

Used to have a Brother MFC; have now migrated to an Epson WF-7520. Much better paper handling, much better print quality.

I need 11x17, so my choices were limited.

Yup, I've got one of those sitting here. A little noisy but no other objections.