Best Value All-In-One Printer Scanner Copier Fax Machine - Brother MFC-845CW

The Brother MFC-845CW made an unexpected appearance in my home office after a trip to Office Max. I don't even remember what it was I went for. There in the middle of an aisle were a stack of Brother all-in-one printer, scanner, fax, copier boxes. I walked past them on the way to whatever it was I was supposed to be getting. On my way back to the register, a single word caught my eye, "Wireless."

You see, I have a nice laser printer from HP and a great photo printer from Canon. I had a pretty junky fax machine, but truth be told, I don't use fax much. What I was missing was a scanner. It's tough to get a document by email and email it back with your signature on it without a scanner. As a professional freelance writer, this was killing me.

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Each new writing gig meant a trip to a copy store so I could scan my signature in. I even resorted to keeping my signature as an image file and doing my best to paste it onto a contract with an image editor. But, when it comes to business, you really shouldn't be messing around with contracts, and so, I wanted a scanner.

The thing is, my two printers, my junky fax machine and my file boxes take up all the shelf space I'm willing to use for such things in my home office. So, it was either put a scanner on the floor, or figure something out. The other flaw in my home office is that my accessories are not right next to my desktop computer, so the USB cables run along the floor. Add to that the fact that I also use a laptop computer and in order to print from it the desktop has to be on (or I have to go over and plug into the printer).

It all adds up to me wanting a printer, scanner, fax, all-in-one, BUT it had to be able to connect to my wireless network by itself. The price? Too high.

I never asked what the deal was, but on this particular day, the Brother MFC-845CW all-in-ones were sitting in the middle of the floor with a sign in front of them. The price? Less than $125! Whatever. But, there was that word, "Wireless." So I looked closer. Not only was it wireless, but it was also color. It also had a phone built into it so I wouldn't have to keep an extra one back in the office.

The specs looked impressive, so I did something I almost never do. I bought it without reading a single review about it or any other color wireless all-in-one. Look around, and you will barely find that price today for the same kind of machine.

They are coming out with new versions of this all-in-one all the time. You can purchase the latest version of the Brother All-In-One printer online.

The verdict? Score!

The printer on this thing is not fast. No problem, I've got a black and white laser printer that cranks out the pages when I need to print. The printer is very good though! I needed some extra real estate fliers one day. I printed a few on the Brother printer just to tide me over until I could get someone to print them on a "real" color printer. The results were amazing! Every bit as good as any other print job we ever had, free or paid, and that was on just thick glossy brochure paper I had laying around. Now, I've printed several photos for my daughter (tigers, kitty cats, etc...) and they come out great. I've never used it to print a photograph for framing (I have that Canon printer for that) but the quality is good enough for anyone who is not a photography enthusiast. If you are just looking to print a 3x5 to mail to Grandma, this thing has you covered.

How about scanning? This is where it got weird. I could print and view the device, but it would not scan to my computer over the network. Not by pressing the buttons on the front, not by using the software. I could scan to a Compact Flash card and the results were great, but not being able to do it over the network was a bummer. Since I could print I didn't understand what it's problem was. I checked the firewall, and never did find a problem. Then, I had another issue come up, and I reset my Norton Firewall and Presto, scanning worked. I will not be re-buying Norton when my subscription runs out. (This isn't' the only thing. Google around, Norton gets in the way of tons of stuff, and you usually can't tell why.)

Scan quality is great and the included software comes with 4 settings so you can get photo quality for scanning pictures, or you can get lesser quality for a signature page on a contract (thank you very much).

What about faxing? Seriously? Has anything had any trouble faxing since 1999? Just to be thorough, yes, it faxes just fine.

The phone works about as well as my AT&T 5.8Ghz phones (good enough, but nothing to write home about).

It also comes with a "message center". As near as I can tell, that is marketing talk for answering machine, but I don't use it.

Another neat feature is the LCD screen. It helps for configuring and if you ever wanted to print directly from a card, you could use the screen to do it. I never do that because I always find it easier to just load them onto my comptuer and print them from there. After all, I'm going to want to save an electronic copy anyways.