Brother International has introduced out two new color ink jet multi-function centers: the 5-in-1 sheet-fed MFC-3100c and the flatbed 5-in-1 MFC-5100c, both of which are Mac compatible. Mac OS X drivers will purportedly be available for download from Brother’s Web site when the units ship.
The new models function as a color fax, color printer, color copier, color scanner and computer fax. The MFC-3100c will be available early next month at an estimated street price of US$199. The MFC-5100c, the flatbed version, will hit stores late in October with an estimated street price of $299. Both new models are based on a new Brother color ink jet engine that prints at up to 10 pages per minute black and 8 pages per minute for color. They offer resolutions of up to 2400 x 1200 dots per inch.
Besides color printing, color copying, and color scanning, both models also provide standalone color faxing or computer faxing. Functioning as a stand-alone fax, they can send and receive both black and white and color faxes via a 14.4K bps fax modem. Using the ITU-T30 standard for color faxing, both models can send and receive color faxes between a wide range of other fax devices that also comply with this standard.
As a color copier (no computer connection is needed to make copies) they have the ability to reduce and enlarge images from 25 percent to 400 percent in increments as small as 1 percent.
The MFC-5100c builds on the base features of the MFC-3100c and includes a larger memory (4 MB or 200 pages compared to 2MB or 100 pages), increased document feed capacity (30 sheets verses 20 sheets) and a higher scanning resolution (up to 9600 dpi compared to 2400 dpi). Both models come with Scansoft PaperPort and TextBridge OCR (optical character recognition) software.