I work from home and was looking for an all-in-one printer to carry out all the tasks I needed to do every day. The Brother MFC-845cw was just the printer I was looking for, as it also came with wireless networking and a cordless phone. While my office isn’t small, space is still limited, so an all-in-one appealed to me, and Brother has a good reputation as a manufacturer, which is what clinched the deal.
The way it has been designed it looks okay in my office. It certainly isn’t the gray or putty colored monstrosity I had feared it would be. It has a digital telephone answering service for when I’m away. Clients can always leave messages for me which I can retrieve later, meaning I’m never really out of touch. The answering machine can save up to 99 messages or up to 29 minutes of speech, which is plenty enough.
The machine allows me to print, scan and fax from my office computer. It prints really fast, up to 27 pages per minute in mono and 22 pages per minute in color. It has a flip up 2.5 inch LCD display which enables me to view and print faxes and photos from my digital camera media card without using a computer. The 1.5 pico prints photos in fine quality and in accurate colors, which is ideal.
The automatic document feeder can hold up to ten pages for fax, copy and scan while the loading paper tray can hold up to 100 sheets of paper. The bypass tray can hold up to 20 sheets of 4x6 glossy papers without taking out the standard paper.
I have a Mac and it works fine with my computer however it can also work with a Windows operating systems too. Not all printers have Apple drivers, or work particularly well with Macs. This one does however, which is a bonus as I didn’t want an Apple printer. The software that it comes with for Mac is Presto! Page Manager and for Windows it comes with an award winning software known as ScanSoft PaperPort SE.
The results of this printer were great which you would normally receive from the most expensive printers available out there in the market. The printer is powerful and has worked brilliantly ever since I installed it. The low toner usage is a bonus but the true test of a manufacturer us when something goes wrong.
Brother didn’t let me down. There were some voice issues with the cordless phone which came after I adjusted the volume settings and the echo mechanism. Whenever I spoke in to the phone, I heard a hissing sound from the other end. That a problem but then I spoke to a Brother support representative who helped me troubleshoot the problem and now the voice quality is great.
