Brother MFC-440CN

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Features

The Brother MFC-440CN has all the standard features you'd expect to find on an office all-in-one. When making copies, you can change print quality, enlarge/reduce, specify paper type and size, adjust brightness and contrast, make 2-on-1 and 4-on-1 prints, or even make a 3-by-3 poster print, where the image is enlarged so that one-ninth of the original will fit on each sheet of paper. The nine prints can then be pieced together to create a large poster.

When sending a fax, you have the option of using the scanner glass or the ADF. You can do a broadcast fax to up to 210 numbers or store up to 50 faxes in memory and time them to be sent within 24 hours (called a delayed fax). For incoming faxes, you can set up the MFC-440CN in a number of different configurations involving answering machines and answer protocols. The included manual walks you through the variations. You can have faxes stored in memory and print them later (for security), or you can have the fax page you at a predetermined number so that you know you have an incoming fax, which you can then retrieve remotely. These features are especially compelling if you have a multiuser environment or just really value your privacy. The fax features on this machine are impressive, especially for the price.

Oddly, scanning isn't covered in the hardcopy user guide, but you can find it on the installation CD (and on your PC after installation). When triggering a scan from the printer, you can choose to scan to e-mail, to image, to an OCR file, or you can simply save it in a folder on your PC. When you initiate the scan from the printer, it automatically opens the Brother Control Center 3 software on your PC. (Alternatively, you can open Control Center 3 manually and initiate the scan from there.) The printer is TWAIN-compliant, so you can also initiate scans from any TWAIN-compliant program, such as Adobe Photoshop. If you have a memory card inserted into the card reader, you have the additional option of scanning directly to the card

When printing from a media card, you have a few options. First, if you know you want to print all the photos on a card, you can do so, but you have to print the same number of copies for each photo. If you want, say, two copies of one but four copies of another, you'll have to manually preview all the pictures on the color LCD and indicate how many prints you want of each picture. After scrolling through all the pictures, you can press Start to initiate printing. The final option is to print a photo index: The printer numbers each picture, and from there, you can input the assigned numbers via the keypad and print only the photos you want. We prefer the way Canon handles photo index printing on its Pixma machines: the index sheet has bubbles that you fill in to indicate which images you want printed. Instead of keying in the photo number, you can simply scan the index sheet, and only the marked images will be printed.

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