Brother lasers are awesome. Their inkjets have the worst drivers I've ever seen for a printer, at least on Windows (yes, worse than HP's massive bloatware and Lexmark's bugtastic crap - try a driver that doesn't clear out the spool, so every few weeks, you have to stop the print spooler service, clear out the spool directory manually, and then restart the print spooler service,) but their lasers are great.

I bought my HL-2070N in October 2007. It's still working great, with the starter cartridge. The thing cost me like $100 after MIRs. It has a VERY good network print server, natively speaks PCL5e (so anything made in the last 15 years or so can print to it in decent quality with no drivers,) and also has Epson and IBM Proprinter dot matrix emulations (so anything made in the last 30 years or so can print to it with no drivers.)

Oh, and in 2006 or so, my former employer bought a bunch of the things. Keep in mind that my former employer was a K-12 private school that specializes in mental health, behavioral handicaps, and learning disabilities. Students got pissed off. Printers occasionally got thrown. One time, one was thrown against a brick wall, hard.

So, the teacher calls me in to take a look at it, expecting me to say it's dead. All the plastics are popped out, but it looks generally intact. I figure it might've gotten damaged, too, but doesn't hurt to try it. I plug it in, and tell it to fire off a test page... and it does so perfectly. When I left, that printer was still in service, still churning out pages like nothing happened.

Anyway, for those looking at the low-end B&W Brother lasers... the HL-2140 and HL-2170W use the same print engine as the HL-2040 and HL-2070N, although with a different toner cartridge and drum. The differences between the 2x40 and 2x70 models are more than just networking (and the W does stand for wireless in the 2170W. I've heard configuring the wireless is tricky, but once it's set up, it apparently works well.) The 2x40 models use a proprietary Brother language only. Brother does supply Linux drivers, though. The 2x70 models natively speak PCL5e, and as I mentioned before, the dot matrix emulations. (The dot matrix emulations aren't that useful today, admittedly, but they're there, and if you've got a bunch of files on an old computer that you decide you want to print to preserve, it could come in handy, because you won't need to haul some piece of crap dot matrix up from your basement or whatever.)

Edit: Just checked the Brother site, and the 21x0 models are faster, so they're probably a tweaked print engine. And, it was PCL6 on the 2x70 models, and the 2170 doesn't do the dot matrix emulations any more.

I think I just found my favorite blogger...

Gotta tell you... I worked for Canon back in the early 90's. Back then Canon built the HP printers. Only significant difference the logic board, which was supplied by HP. I have to assume that HP is still outsourcing the manufacturing to the likes of Canon.

I know HP is the standard; but, after working for Canon I never saw an HP printer as anything special, even if they are well supported.

Point is, there's no point to assuming HP will be the best option.

I can't believe no one has commented on the Ferris quote.

My father-in-law does some side-work on printer/copier/fax machine repairs, and works on Brother printers and MFCs a lot. I used to poke fun at him about them all the time, with the eye rolls and whatnot. But lately, I must say... They've been doing pretty well and been putting out some nice products.

I've had an HL-5250DN Laser for a while now. I have it installed on my network and it's absolutely perfect. So recently I replaced an HP Color Laserjet 2840 with a Brother MFC-9840CDW. The HP's software was a mess (basically not designed for Vista!). So the new Brother is a joy to use. I don't think I'll ever buy another HP again.

"Besides, printing photos is the one area where inkjets really beat the bejeepers out of lasers."

Only in price/performance terms, assuming you don't mind either having your paper come out of the printer wet and wrinkled, or paying for photo paper. An office-class laser can do excellent color, but of course the price on one of those starts around $3k.

Brother may not be the BMW of the printer world, but it is more like Toyota and Honda combined. ;)

I just bought a Brother HL 2140 for $65 when it was on sale last weekend at Newegg. It was $65. For what I need out of a printer, it was a damn steal. It only had a "starter" toner, but even with buying a "high yield" toner cart for it, it'll still be under $110 for alot of printing.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828113290

Doesn't print on DVDs, though. And while it doesn't have built-in Ethernet, both Windows 7 and OS X print to it over my Airport Extreme. Seems like Ethernet for me is a waste. And it's not an all-in-one.

So it's not useful to you, I suppose, but my point is wow, laser tech is cheap!

I'm definitely spoiled by the Canon copier I have on the other side of my cube-wall. Color Laser, a bajillion ppm, duplex scanning over network. I just bring stuff to work if I ever need to scan.

My wife has an Epson AIO that does a great job printing photo's and the scanner is good enough for all of our uses. I'd love to upgrade to one of the Canon AIO's, but its not in the budget right now.

I've been buying Brother MFC's for about 4 years now for jobsite offices(lots of dirt and dust) because they are cheap and functional. I normally get about 2 years out of them, and you can't beat that for the price. The scan to network function is great for sending invoices in pdf format , instead useing the fax..also fax isn't supported on Clearwire service anyways(phones are generally not available on new industrial contruction for quite a while) . I have been using 4 Brother Laser Fax machines in the office for at least 6 years and have only had to replace 1 of them, they truelly are workhorses.

I've used a Brother laser at my grandfathers and bought my own, I trust them more than most for that.

That just sucks! I thought that the Brother was an interesting device, but the best price in Aus is AUS$628. Pass...

have to make do with my HL-1270N...

I use a refurbed MFC-8820D, it works every time I go to use it. It doesn't have networking though :(

I'm curious, what do you think of the shape?

I'm just thinking it can be your guard-printer at night. Some robber comes in and sees this and thinks it's an alien! ;-)

I like the one Brother printer I ever interacted with. It was a long time ago, and it was the printer that just kept going. Out lived a number of LaserJets.

My dad's had a Brother laserjet for the past 6 years or so, ever since his HP laserjet got a little broken up after about 3 years. Never had any complaints with it.

I hated brother inkjets back when I sold them, but loved their laser printers. They usually had a great mix of price to features, with reasonable consumable cost. I used to sell tons of the one you just bought to people just like you. Hope it works out. We used to run sells on it for 299-350 pretty often; they always sold out when we did.