Brother MFC-490CW Color Inkjet Wireless All-in-One Printer

Comment: I got this February 2009 and it seemed like it would be a great printer. A few months later after I went to replace the Black ink cartridge, it stopped printing black completely. I tried another black cartridge and still wouldn't print black. I tried going through the cleaning process as Brother suggested in the FAQ's on their website but nothing worked. I didn't have time to contact brother right away and by the time I did, they told me they would send me a factory refurbished replacement and to send mine back. I did that. I got the new one and it printed fine for a couple months. One day I got a paper jam and tried clearing it and now it won't stop running it's wheels and says there's a jam after a few mins. There's nothing in there for paper, I have checked. I am frustrated with this machine at this point! I will never buy a Brother printer again!

Comment: This printer has many great features at a great price. The biggest drawback and reason I would never purchase it again is the ink. The software recognized how much ink is in each cartridge. When you go to print it won't let you print if it feels the ink is too low to print at decent quality. I am fine with that. One color of ink, even when rarely used depletes and you can't print anything, not even in gray scale when you have a new full black cartridge. So if you want this printer get used to having new cartridges laying around to replace the ones that never ran out in the first place because otherwise you won't be printing anything. I don't think this was an accident, I feel this is exactly brothers intention to keep you buying ink even when you don't need it. You can try to call them if you can find a number. I wasn't able too so I suppose I can send an email and wait to get the form letter response back. I chose instead to do what gets things done and that is post reviews that will prevent people from making the same regrettable purchase and get brother to adjust the product to meet customer needs. I have owned this printer for 1.5 years and have had enough. Great machine at first but the ink frustration ruins it. You never really own this machine, you just rent it as you are constantly replacing ink that you don't use or need. A great scam if you ask me. I will go back to my old trusty HP even though its a dinosaur compared to this printer.

Comment: I like the new star rating system, however there is no way to put N/A. I rated noise and print quality as 5 stars. Noise is something I could care less about, so I would have put N/A. I don't know how much noise a device like this is supposed to put out, although it is no more noisy to me than any printer or scanner I have ever had. As far as print quality, I don't use this printer to print pictures(my primary rating of print quality) as I have other printers for that, but the text looks fine so I rated this 5 stars as well.

Overall, this piece of equipment has to be one of the most well designed and easiest to setup and use of any computer peripheral I have ever had.

Really, It couldn't be simpler. Setup was a breeze, use is a breeze, one touch use buttons on the front makes it easy for non-computer people(like my wife) to use, etc.

There are only two minor gripes I would have about this "all in one"

One, the wireless is awesome and was easy to setup. It works flawlessly for printing via my wife's Macbook, however after initial setup for my Vista Based HP computer, I lost the ability for the computer to find the printer and print to it. Scans to my computer work perfectly though. Go figure, a difficulty with Microsoft, HOW UNLIKELY IS THAT?

Two, although most people have no problem faxing to this machine, on one occasion a person said they tried to send me a fax and I never received it. I think it might have been an issue on their end as after that I did some tests, and couldn't find a problem with it at all.


Scan:
When you want to scan, you put the document in either the ADF and you get a message saying "ADF Ready" and you hit scan. It gives you four options for scanning and which of our two computers to send the document to. simple.

Copy:
Copying is a two button process from the front. Either load the ADF or open up the flat bed and place the document in it, and press copy. It works just like any Copy machine I have used at work, and is more simple.

Print:
Printing is a breeze, except for that minor issue with my Vista Machine. I would bet that is a Microsoft issue and not a Brother issue. I think I have read something about I need to set up my computer to have a permanent IP address or something. My internet works fine, so I don't want to mess with it. Besides, I might be willing to do this if my wife's Mac didn't work flawlessly.

Fax:

Besides that ghost issue I have mentioned above, it works perfectly.

Summary:

I really like this "All in One" and would highly recommend it based on my experience. This has been a winner for me.

Comment: Good Lord, this thing is terrible. We've had it for 3 months now and do a lot of printing. Not easy to navigate or change. No once touch use. Print quality is horrid and to set up for each print job is not easy. There are no easy settings and quality settings aren't simple. The separate cartridges for each color is a pain and not cheap. They run out fast, especially the black! Latest problem, if one color runs out you cannot print! The yellow ran out and now we're stuck. We can't even go in to set it to print just black and white for documents. So we have a dead printer until we get cartridges filled. This is going back even if we have to contact Brother directly to get our money back! It stinks!

The only reason why we got this is because we got a new computer and our old Lexmark wasn't compatible with Windows Vista. Our old Lexmark printer is a dream! The only thing wrong with it is it's a bit loud but prints like a dream after all these years. It too is an all in one and works to perfection and easy to use. When we take this junk Brother back we'll be going back to Lexmark. All of our printers were Lexmark and never had problems!

Comment: There were many reviews that said that it was hard to set up. My husband didn't have any problems. I am very happy with the print quiality. I would reccommand it for use in the home.