Brother HL-2040 Monochrome Laser Printer

I bought this printer to replace my HP Laserjet Series II that I purchased new in 1988. I doubt that I will get 19 years out of this one, however, it turns out to be a very good little basic monochrome printer. Having both the Centronics and the USB port for connectivity allowed me to replace it right in where the HP used to be on my wireless printserver without changing any of my "legacy" configuration or I could move it to a USB configuration if needed.The time to print the first page can be a little long, but once this printer gets going it is reasonably quick. The first toner cartridge that came with the printer is still hanging in there pretty well with near daily use for about a month.It can be a quite tricky lining up a manual feed page to go through square and straight. If I want a letter on letterhead to come out parallel to the edges of the page, I usually open the paper tray and let it go through the conventional path. Envelopes through the manual feed are just too crumpled by the time they feed through the entire paper feed path to the output bin. I've had no problem feeding through label stock or even the half-label/half-paper shipping labels provided by my shipping company.I'm pretty happy with this - it's a considerable upgrade from the printer I'm replacing in terms of resolution and speed. However, I certainly don't have any illusions or expectations that this product is as durable as the behemoth tank that it replaced.

i read all the amazon reviews before buying this printer, and shopped around for a good deal. i got that with the Brother printer, with a [...], so my total price was about $69.00 plus about $6 for the cable. It prints pretty fast, the quality is good. It's not that loud. The only thing I notice screwy about it is when I print a stack of pages on one side, then put them back in the tray so I can print on the other side (to conserve paper), occasionally the printer grabs 2 sheets instead of one, or prints half on one sheet and half on the other. This has happened twice so far. It's possible I need to let the printed pages sit for 5 minutes before sticking them back in the tray, I don't know.Other than that, so far so good.UPDATE: 2013The last two years, this printer has been spitting out smeared pages. I can't seem to get it to clean itself up, even though I went through with a q-tip, and tried a new toner cartridge. Recently, I got some 20lb paper, and it won't feed properly. So though it worked well for a while, I really thought it would have lasted a bit longer than it has. I suppose I could take it to get repaired, but that would cost a bit, and be a hassle. It was decent for the first two years, but then kind of went downhill.

We got this printer to cut down on the expense we were incurring with inkjet printers. By making it the default, and only switching to the inkjet when we NEEDED color, we have saved a fortune already. Also, this printer is fast and seems to be pretty reliable (we've had it 10 months with no hassles.) All of that would normally cause me to give it a five-star rating. However....Trying to use the manual feed is a nightmare. There is no appreciable guide for the paper and once the paper is inserted, the printer can get finicky and simply decide to sit there blinking a red light at you. There is no way to introduce more than one sheet at a time. There is no software fix for this--I think: the help files provided are so "user-friendly" as to be useless for any real troubleshooting. The only thing I could figure was to turn the printer off and start from scratch.The user interface provided is obtuse, again, a victim of "user-friendly" obscurantism.The manual feed problems are surmountable, if you have a lot of experience with different laser-writers (which, fortunately, I do).So:If you are computer-savvy and experienced, this is a great printer for you.If you just want to print MS-Word or B&W images from the net on regular 20# bond, you'll be all right.But if you are trying to do anything fancy and you don't have a lot of experience, you might not be happy with this one.

Being a very busy student myself, there's definitely a lot of paper activity when it comes to using this printer, and so far there have been no problems whatsoever. It's very simple to use and it doesn't take a million years to sift through instructions or procedures to get it running.When you plug in the USB cable into the computer (I have a Mac), the only thing you have to do is make sure the computer is connected to the printer and you're ready to go. Speaking of "ready" the Ready/Go button is only button you have to push to turn it on (and pretty much the only button on the whole printer). In a few quick seconds the printer is done loading (or in other words making those interesting "whurring" sounds). That's the thing I've loved most about this printer: how fast it is. Even the printing of documents is done lickety-split (Well duh, it is a laser printer).Unlike its HP counterparts, there's no connection problems. If you frequently unplug an HP printer from the computer, the HP goes on the fritz and documents get backed up. With the Brother HL this is no problem at all. It makes printer technology very simple: If the blinking light is off, it's off. If the light is on, well.. you get the picture. It even conserves energy by automatically turning off after 10 minutes of unuse. Other printers would waste energy by being left on the whole day.So, so far I've been very satisfied with buying this printer. I hope other consumers won't resort to the free HP printers that come with the purchase of PCs (there's a reason they're free), because they will quickly disappoint.