Brother DCP1200 Mulitifunction Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I bought this to replace an aging HP 5L that no longer fed paper properly - had to feed one sheet at a time.
In the past three months I have printed over 3,000 pages (am ordering the Brother 6,000 page toner unit from ... as I type this and another box of paper ... and I have been very pleased with the results so far. Printing is fast, quality is good. The room does not smell of toner. The only problem I've had is when I inadvertantly send too many copies of print job and the output bin overflows (80+ pages) jamming the machine. I just need to send fewer copies at a time.
I also bought this for the copier feature. I was sick of going to the neighborhood pharmacy to make really bad copies. The copier works great on a variety of items. Driver's license, documents, etc. The quality is outstanding, and I am pretty picky about copies. The sheet-feeder is amazing. I was very surprised by how adequately fast the sheet-feeder was feeding pages to the scanner. The feeder also allows you to scan items longer than the scanning bed, since the paper is moving and not the scanning device. And there is always the flatbed scanning for books or when you need that "higher" level of quality.
I believe there are other laser multifunction devices out now that might be competitive with the Brother, but at the time I bought this, this was the best cost for my set of requirements. The stories of Xerox toner life sort of kept me from those. It looks like someone was planning a fax module since there are holes (not jacks) for phone lines in the back. Just thought that was interesting. I already have a standalone fax, but could see how the lack of fax capability would prevent a purchase.
I use Windows 2000 and I still think the Brother 1200 is great. I did have to download drivers that were not obvious to find (though they are on the Brother web site). I have done scanning and OCR without problems with the Brother TWAIN drivers. But these were initiated from the computer. I don't know how much functionality is retained for the scan/email buttons on the device itself. But then, I haven't really needed them. You may need a Brother background app to run for those to function.
The device is connected to my parallel port because the cable was 10 feet long. The USB cable is only 6', otherwise I would have used that. I stopped buying parallel port devices (besides printers) about 3 years ago, so I'm guessing the multi-device on LPT is less of an issue for most people now.
Some other negatives: The supplied OCR program doesn't retain formatting, so I stuck in another program into the PaperPort app they supply. The device is kind of big, but it doesn't seem like the size is gratuitous.
Some other things about my situation. I already have an inkjet for color printing. I would not consider an inkjet multifunction for anything but the light printing needs. I am a IT contractor, so my tolerance for driver searches may be slightly higher. I print about 1,000 pages a month since my wife also goes to law school.
In conclusion, this has been one of the most satisfactory purchases I have made in a while. I've also recently purchased a LinkSys wireless cable modem router, and that has been much more disappointing. Maybe I'll write a review on that.
So that's my first review. Hope it was useful. Wow. This was much longer than I had originally planned.

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Product Description:
Equip your office with the Brother DCP1200 Multifunction, a digital copier, laser printer, and color scanner brilliantly packaged in one convenient desktop system. The DCP1200 Multifunction combines high-speed output, featuring a rapid 12 ppm for copy and print functions, with true 600 x 600 dpi professional quality print resolution.
A 50-page automatic document feeder and 250-sheet dual-size paper cassette with a sorting capability of up to 99 copies, means increased productivity for the small workgroup or individual user. You can manually pass a variety of paper types including envelopes, transparencies, laser label, and custom-size sheets. The Brother DCP1200 Multifunction offers a wide range for zoom reduction and enlargement with settings from 25 to 400 percent. Easily scan your color documents in the flatbed color scanner that uses 1,200 x 1,200 dpi interpolated resolution and 300 x 600 dpi optical resolution. With the touch of a button you can even scan directly to e-mail.
This versatile system includes Brother automatic e-mail printing, ScanSoft PaperPort, and TextBridge OCR (optical character recognition) software. Solidly backed by a three-year warranty, the Brother DCP1200 Multifunction sets a new industry standard for flexibility in document printing and reproduction. --Carol Pierce