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Thursday, October 27, 2011

Brother HL-3040CN Compact Digital Color Printer with Networking

The HL-3040CN is a digital color printer with networking that is ideal for home offices or small offices. It produces brilliant, high-quality output at up to 600 x 2400 dpi resolution with a fast print speed of up to 17ppm in color or black.  The HL-3040CN also provides a 250-sheet capacity paper tray and a straight through paper path via its manual feed slot, ideal for printing envelopes and letterhead.  Additional features include a built-in Ethernet network interface for printer sharing and a Toner Save mode to reduce toner usage.

Brand: Brother Model: HL-3040CN Platform: Windows Format: CD-ROM Original language: English Number of items: 1 Dimensions: 9.80" h x 16.10" w x 18.30" l, 48.00 pounds Prints up to 17ppm in color and black Built-in Ethernet network interface High-quality output at up to 600 x 2400 dpi resolution using Brother's Digital LED technology Adjustable 250-sheet capacity paper tray for letter or legal size paper Straight through paper path via manual feed slot for printing envelopes and thicker media

Most helpful customer reviews 84 of 84 people found the following review helpful. I have owned four color lasers - this is the best of that group By Billy Hollis I have owned color lasers from HP, Xerox, and Lexmark previously. All of them had issues that gave me fits. All had installation and driver issues which cost me many hours of time to resolve. No such problems here. Plug it in, answer a few questions, and it's printing. I have Windows 7 64 bit, and I was cringing because I expected problems, but I didn't have any. I used the network setup with an Ethernet cable plugged in, and now all the computers in my house can see it and use it. I never did get networking to work right on the Xerox, though I fiddled with settings for the better part of a couple of days.The print quality of this printer is only fair, but for business use it's more than adequate. I've printed a set of training manuals, which have quite a bit of graphics in them, and not noticed the problems noted by another reviewer. Now it's true that this is not a photo printer, and the quality of the printing is not as good as the Xerox 8560 I had, or various photo printers I've seen. But it's fine for typical reports, slide printouts, and so forth. As to capacity, I printed about 900 pages with this printer out of the box, and it's still going. A negative reviewer reported problems in getting only a small number of pages with the starter toner, and expressed surprise at the 5% coverage guideline used to estimate pages. Well, every printer I've ever had used that same 5% to estimate page capacity and cost, so I don't see the problem here. I have almost printed the number of pages the printer is supposed to get out of the box without getting any low toner problems.Another advantage: this printer's replacement cartridges are cheaper than any of the other printers I've owned, even the crayon-like blocks for the Xerox. The printer also has a draft mode that saves toner, which was not available on any other printer I've owned. I don't expect to use it, but others might find it helpful.So the bottom line is that the price, speed, quality, and ease of setup make this a very good match for home office or light departmental business color printing. As someone who has been around the block with various color lasers, this one has been a very pleasant surprise.**Update 14 Jan 2010**I'll subtract half a star for the marginal front feed mechanism. When I use lightweight card stock through the front feeder, every three pages or so I get no feed and a spurious paper jam. I have to exert a small amount of pressure with my hand on the sheet to ensure that it feeds correctly. If it feeds, the result is good because of the flat paper path, but the front feeder ought to work better than that, especially since it only takes one sheet at a time.**Update 21 Mar 2010**I just began replacing toner cartridges after getting about 1100 pages from the in-the-box set. They cyan cartridge went first and the magenta cartridge a bit later, which was no surprise since my slide theme has a lot of blue in it. I got another pleasant surprise: the printer demanded new cyan toner after printing 60 of 75 pages for a manual. I thought I would probably have to start over (because Powerpoint is utterly stupid about numbering pages on handouts). No problem, though. The printer stays on for toner cartridge replacement, and it's easy as pie to do it. Just don't forget to slide the gizzy back and forth that cleans the corona wire. After putting the cover back down, the printer picked up where it left off and knocked out the last fifteen pages.In other news, I found a 256M DIMM from an old laptop, and upgraded the printer's memory. Really easy, though of course you do have to turn it off for that one. There's an exposed slot on the side to put the memory in, and it came right up when the printer was turned back on. The printer is faster now, and doesn't tie up my computer as long on these 75 page print jobs.

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