Brother Multi Function 9010CN
Thanks to the efforts of FEDEX and a delivery at 7:45 PM my new Brother Multi Function Laserjet Printer, Model 9010CN, arrived today.
This is the first laser jet printer I have ever owned and it was a terrific Black Friday Deal (early on Amazon.com actually). Normal price was $399 and the special Amazon.com Lightening Deal had it at $279. Since I had been doing a lot of research on laser jets and was looking for such a deal I jumped on it. Turns out my wife was also researching the same type of printers to give me for Christmas. She is so terrific!
With Christmas coming a little early I eagerly unpacked the massive box the printer arrived in.
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It was very well packaged and the printer was in the middle of the box surrounded by styrofoam to protect its sides from external damage. The printer weighs in at 50 lbs with toner cartridges loaded in.
Inside the box besides the printer was 4 toner cartridges (black, magenta, cyan and Yellow); power cord, software install CD-ROM and all the paperwork If your installing this printer on a Windows 7 system then you need to go to the Brother Support website and grab it:
- Released: Full Driver & Software Package for Windows 7 and Windows 7 x64
Once all of the packaging material and tape is removed you install all four toner cartridges (their spots are color coded so you get them right) and fill the paper tray (250 sheet capacity). Initial print capacity is approximately 1,400 pages with the initial set of toner cartridges that come with the printer.
Once that is done you plug it up and connect the network cable. Next step is to install the software suite that includes drivers and the interface software for scanning and copying (called the Control Center3). If you have DHCP set up on your home network it will reach out and get its own IP address. Once everything is installed it will prompt you to reboot your system and then it comes back online you will find your new printer installed in the Printers Control panel applet:
As you can see by the green check mark – it is already set as the default printer and is ready to go.
You can adjust some of the printer settings via its web based interface by typing the IP address of the printer in the web browser address bar:
The accompanying documentation provides you with the default username and password which you can change easily form this interface.
Using either the Control Center3 interface at your PC or from the front panel of the printer you can scan documents directly into a file, image or email. The printer also has an automatic document feeder that can hold 35 pages for scanning automatically. My initial tests of the scanning at the default settings showed it to be very good.
I also test printed a high quality image and it turned out very good on default settings. I am sure it would be picture quality at the higher resolutions.
The last thing I will mention is power for the printer. Since it is a laserjet and it fuses the toner to the paper the fuser heats that element up like an iron to get the job done. Peak power usage is listed as 1,176W. Copying it uses 480W, sleep mode 10W and standby 75W. It is Energy Star compliant. For me here at home it is almost like using the iron – dims my lights just slightly as it heats up.
The long term cost of ownership for this printer will be lower than my previous ink jet for sure. Although initial outlay is higher for the printer itself and replacement toner cartridges I get much more output before having to change out anything. It seemed I was always running out of ink!
So bottom line is that at the right price one of these printers is a terrific bargain and can really make a difference in the overall quality and cost of your home printing solution.
