Scanning and Faxing recommendations

lilelvis2000 · 19th July 2008, 15:39

The wife needs a new fax as her current perhistoric one has just given up the ghost.

I have been hunting around for a Multifunction Mono Laser one with will scan and fax on a network. Have found a Brother which seems to fit the bill.

Don't need the laser printing. But my experience with inkjet is they will dry out quickly without use - though it may be still cost effective to refill it constantly.

Anyone have any experience or recommendations? Something around £250 is her absolute max.

Fred Bloggs · 19th July 2008, 16:16

I had a Brother MFD that did it all. I used about 2 sets of inkjet cartridges in a year, so it wasn't heavily used. 1 month outside of the 1 yr warranty it gave a error message on the LED screen. To cut a long story short the message meant "give us a load of money", more than the cost of a new machine. Brother would not sell me the part to install myself. I chucked it and bought a HP that has been trouble free so far. It grieved me to throw away such a complex piece of kit for a relatively minor fault.

(I should add here to be fair that the 4 toner cartridges for the HP (laser) machine will cost more to replace than the cost of a new machine when the time comes. Ho hum......)

lilelvis2000 · 19th July 2008, 20:43

[quote=Fred Bloggs;588672]I had a Brother MFD that did it all. I used about 2 sets of inkjet cartridges in a year, so it wasn't heavily used. 1 month outside of the 1 yr warranty it gave a error message on the LED screen. To cut a long story short the message meant "give us a load of money", more than the cost of a new machine. Brother would not sell me the part to install myself. I chucked it and bought a HP that has been trouble free so far. It grieved me to throw away such a complex piece of kit for a relatively minor fault.

(I should add here to be fair that the 4 toner cartridges for the HP (laser) machine will cost more to replace than the cost of a new machine when the time comes. Ho hum......)[/QUOTE]

Yeah, and some want the fuser and belt changed after a while as well...about £500!

We'd go with a mono laser as we have no need for colour. So I think for Brother..you only replace the ink which is quite cheap.

Fred Bloggs · 20th July 2008, 07:59

The ink for the Brother is only cheap if you hardly use it. I am thinking that the lifetime cost of ownership of these devices is actually very, very high. The "environmental cost" is simply appalling if you throw them away after about 18 months and buy a new one, which actually seems to be the lowest cost way of running one.

Bright Spark · 20th July 2008, 08:59

I recently bought a brother MFC-7420 which is a laser printer,fax,scanner and copier, which is great, I haven't used the fax yet only copier printer, so far so good, I bought this for £130 from staples, just checked amazon are doing the similar offer for approx £145 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brother-MFC-.../dp/B0009MUDHO.

lilelvis2000 · 20th July 2008, 20:03

Will check it out. Probably need to run it on a network as there is no convenient place near a PC to put it. So may look into a printer server for it...Kinda ironic as we probably won't do any printing - only faxing and scanning. While some unit with a NIC claim to be network ready, it usually only applies to the printing and out-going fax.

BolshieBastard · 20th July 2008, 21:18

Cant you put a fax \ modem card in your pc? This way anything you prepare on the pc can be faxed direct.

Spacecadet · 21st July 2008, 08:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fred Bloggs

(I should add here to be fair that the 4 toner cartridges for the HP (laser) machine will cost more to replace than the cost of a new machine when the time comes. Ho hum......)

Usually the toner cartridges that come supplied with the pirnter are only "starter" packs and are at most 20% full

Sockpuppet · 21st July 2008, 08:12

Cheap scanner and computer software.

I am currently using BT Ring Central and its very, very good.

lilelvis2000 · 21st July 2008, 14:05

Silly me.

My wife reminded me that the photo copier also scans . we have a konica-minolta bizhub. After some time figuring this out...the manual has absolutely no information on this...I got it working.
I can scan-to-SMB - which doesn't seem to work to my SAMBA machine
scan-to-FTP which is what I used to get around this limitation.

It is lightening quick. Though I haven't tried colour..I think the scan is only B&W which is sufficient for our needs.