O, Brother, where art thou? The distributor of fax, printer and multi-function products is at Macworld Expo San Francisco, introducing new products, including a new color inkjet fax, two new color lasers, and laser digital copiers.
Brother’s IntelliFax-1800c is a full function fax machine utilizing Brother’s Piezo-based color inkjet technology, and offers a full range of features, including a Super G3 33.6K bps fax modem, 8 MB memory, and color copying. Targeted to small business users, it has an estimated street price of US$199 and will be available this month.
Customers with tight budgets usually only had the choice of thermal transfer technology, but now with the IntelliFAX-1800c, they can get the latest color inkjet technology for their plain paper fax needs, said Don Cummins, Brother’s VP of marketing. While the cost of printing thermal transfer faxes may range from seven to 12 cents per page, the IntelliFAX-1800c delivers faxes in black for about 2.5 cents per page, he said.
The Super G3 33.6K bps fax modem of the IntelliFAX-1800c offers maximum transmission speeds of 4 seconds per page. The device’s 8 MB memory can store up to 480 pages for out-of-paper reception, or it can be used to store large documents for later transmission from memory. This large capacity memory means even color faxes can be received into memory when paper runs out, Cummins said. The Dual Access capability even lets you scan faxes into memory while the unit is busy sending or receiving. Its Quick Scan feature, as fast as two seconds per page, and the IntelliFAX-1800c has a paper capacity of up to 100 sheets. It produces full-color, high-resolution copies at up to 1200 x 1200 dpi and packs a 20-page automatic document feeder. The IntelliFAX-1800c’s copy features also include reduction and enlargement capabilities from 25 to 400 percent in 1 percent increments. There’s also a 2-in-1 copy mode.
The IntelliFAX-1800c’s USB interface means it can be used as a color printer. It offers a color printer capable of up to 2400 x 1200 dpi resolution, print speeds of up to 10 pages per minute monochrome and eight pages per minute color. The print driver is available free via download from the Brother Solutions Web site, but the USB cable must be purchased separately.
Brother also announced two new network ready color laser printers — the Brother HL-2600CN and HL-3450CN — at MWSF.
Representing Brother’s third generation color laser platform, the HL-2600CN features position it as a solution for connected workgroups seeking performance and value in a color laser printer, Jeff Sandler, Brother’s senior product manager for printers, said. It delivers color printing at up to 6 ppm color and up to 24 ppm monochrome with 2400 dpi output.
The HL-2600CN also offers a variety of productivity enhancing features and options, Sandler said. For instance, there’s an improved user control panel with a one-touch job cancel button that lets the user easily stop a print job and a one-touch reprint button to reprint the last job sent to the printer. The HL-2600CN also offers a password protected secure printing function for users concerned with ensuring confidential printing such as a human resource or finance department.
Additional standard features include a manual duplex, poster and n-up printing (up to 25 pages on a single page) as well as toner save and power save print modes. The HL-2600CN also offers a number of options, including a hard disk drive or compact flash for advanced job spooling, storage, accounting and reprinting, a duplex unit for two-sided printing, and a 500-sheet lower paper tray.
The HL-3450CN is Brother’s second generation, large format color laser printer capable of printing up to 6ppm in color, up to 24ppm in monochrome at up to 2400dpi resolution. It’s different from the HL-2600CN as it can print in wide format and print two 8.5 x 11 inch pages side-by-side. The HL-3450CN also offers a number of options including a hard drive and compact flash storage, lower paper trays and a duplex unit.
Both printers come standard with a built-in 10/100 Base T Ethernet web server for network connectivity. This feature lets users remotely manage the printer through Web browsers and perform a number of operations including viewing and changing printer settings, monitoring printer supplies status and managing the printer’s RAMDISK or optional compact flash or hard disk storage.
System administrators can also utilize Brother’s BR-Admin Professional software to view, manage and configure any network connected Brother printer and SNMP compliant printers in TCP/IP and IPX/SPX environments.
Finally, Brother has announced its second generation of digital copiers with the introduction of the new DCP-1000 and DCP-1400. The DCP-1000 (up to 10 cpm) and the DCP-1400 (up to 15 cpm) are both digital copiers that can each also operate as a laser printer and a flatbed color scanner. With USB and parallel ports, the DCP-1000 and the DCP-1400, which have estimated street prices of $399 and $499 respectively, are both shipping now. Both offer printouts with up to 600×600 dpi resolution.
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