Brother MFC-6490cw Professional Series Color Inkjet All-in-One Printer with Wireless Networking

List Price: $299.99 Discount Price: $222.31

Features:

• Multifuction inkjet 4-in-1 network device prints photos and documents, copies, scans, and faxes
• Built-in 802.11b/g wireless and 10/100Mbps wired interface
• Prints at up to 35ppm black and 28ppm color; maximum resolution of 6000 x 1200 dpi
• Prints and copies on up to ledger-size (11 x 17-inch) paper; copies up to 23 cpm
• Measures 21.3 x 12.7 x 19.2-inches (WxHxD); two-year warranty

Customer Reviews:

The PERFECT solution [Posted on 2008-07-11]
I've been looking for a large format all in one scanner for quite a while now. It is so disappointing to have so many large all-in-one printers that still have a tiny scan plate.

this one has a monster 11x17 inch scan surface!

i already was in line to buy at office depot when i saw that it also has wifi! then when i got home i noticed it has memory card readers and color lcd display. it just keeps getting better!

tried out the scanner, quality is great...and FAST! i'm glad this is a Brother too, i've never been impressed with any HP product, and they seem to dominate the industry now :(

so far, i couldn't be happier...and i assume with a 2 year warranty that i should stay happy :-) the only thing i could possibly think of to take it to the next level would be a laser version

11x17!! [Posted on 2008-08-06]
I use AutoCAD at work and occasionally at home. My hubby and I jumped when we saw this printer: just had to get it! The print is as good as on the 11x17 HP inkjet at work, and this 11x17 scanner is a better size than any of the workplace ones (although I haven't used that function yet).
Hubby managed to hook up the 6490 to our home wifi without help, and no, he didn't set our wifi up originally, and no, he doesn't really understand how wifi works. In fact, hubby is visually handicapped! I'd rate ease of installation to wifi as 5 stars. The only glitch we had was that we didn't know we had a firewall, but the install disc talked us though that step too.
So now I'm sitting in bed typing on my Dell 1520 XP and sending to the printer in the other room. I don't know how it goes through ink, but will post back if I have an issue about that or anything else in the future.

Very good overall. [Posted on 2008-08-10]
I didn't actually buy the printer from Amazon. I bought this hulking device at Office Depot because it came with a $100 rebate. But the overall list price is definitely worth it. I mostly got it because it has a large area scanner that I need for my pencil work.

Listing the features would be useless since there is already a description of what it does above. So i'll go over the pros and cons.

Pros

-Very large scanner. Largest i've seen at an affordable price and common availability.

-LCD screen. Decent resolution and overall the right size.

-Interface. It is very easy to navigate through menus and do what you want.

-Wi-Fi. Truly a god-sent. We have 4 computers at home hooked up to this puppy.

-Large print outs. 11x17. Woo!

-Fast scanning at multiple resolutions.

Cons

-Software. The package comes bundled with a picture and scanning software. It is overall very slow and I had to reinstall it a couple times because of how unstable it was. This was however on a mac. It might work fine on windows. But it's not mandatory to have it, and if your serious about your work you use other software anyway.

-Print quality. Not the best in the world i'll admit. Colors aren't as saturated as I would have liked. I don't know if it not being a laser printer has anything to do with it.

-Big and bulky. Consider your home or office space before spending your hard earned cash on this one. It's not a space saver, i'll tell you that much.

-The text on the LCD screen can a times be very small. Not a problem for me, but can sometimes be a problem for older people. (my parents)

-Printing process can take a while over a wi-fi network. Not painfully long, but enough to take notice.

Not applicable

-Fax function because I have yet to use it.

For me there were three major factors in making this purchase. Scanning in large sketches, printing large documents, and wi-fi. If your only going to print on standard 8.5x11 then go for something cheaper. But for an artist like me who needs a larger scanner and appreciates all the extra stuff that comes with it, I could not think of anything better for the price.

Impressive feature set [Posted on 2008-09-02]
I had a 3-year-old HP all-in-one that has been the shared household printer for 4 users. It finally went south on me and when i went to replace it i saw the MFC-6490CW at the local Staples ... actually my wife pointed it out to me. I have always needed a large format printer and a fax readily available which meant having two machines. This beauty eliminates the need for them. I took me less than two hours to set it up and get the drivers installed on an XP desktop, a Vista laptop, and XP laptop and a Linux laptop [Ubuntu 8.04] all using a WiFi connection. Brother really has their act together offering the Linux drivers, too.

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