I’m on this organization kick lately.  Long story, but let us just say that I have recently been taking steps to address a bit of a Disorder due to a Deficit in Attention.

Anyway, one of the characteristics of this “disorder” is the inability to throw junk away.  Instead, I *used to* keep it.  It could be broken (as in “garbage”) or semi-functional (as in “garbage”).  Broken stuff would get put away for the day that I’d need the parts or fix it (as in “when hell freezes over”).  Semi-functional stuff would stay out to be used once, frustrate me, and then collect dust until the next time I consider throwing it out.  Use once, frustrate, collect dust.  And repeat.

A variation on this theme is stuff that is completely functional but doesn’t meet my needs or perform at the level I’d like.  I’d had just such a situation with my laser printer and fax machine/scanner.  While they worked OK, they were both starting to lose their quality mojo.  Also, they were separate components and required an additional box to enable them to be put on my wireless network.  The last little annoyance was that the printer did not do full-duplex.  Often, I’d print out long documents, and to save paper, I’d manually divide the job and flip the sheets over.  Eesh.

Well, it’s that time of year when I think “time to spend some capital!”  I looked around my office, and there they were… taking up all kinds of plugs and counter space.  The laser printer was producing gray, stripey documents and having a hard time feeding single sheets.  The faxes would only go through half the time, and scans were so slow as to be… well, I have things to do.

So, I ordered myself one of these: The Brother MFC-8890DW

Now, I don’t print an awful lot nor scan that often.  Still, I only paid roughly $400 for this thing.  That’s about what I paid for my laser printer some years ago.  The short story is that, so far, I am greatly pleased.

The MFC-8890DW is a fairly large piece of kit (as my friend, Roy, likes to say now that he’s British), but it takes up less counter space than my old fax did.  Set up took just a few minutes, really, and the thing is on my wireless network (with WPA2 encryption).  It prints duplex (i.e., both sides), it prints fast (they claim 32 PPM), it scans up to 2400dpi, and scans to Samba shares, hosts, email, USB stick, and lord knows where else.

They seem to be getting better at balancing cheap, plastic construction with the impression of durability because it seems quite solid.

Adding this printer to my linux machines required… well, very little.  I said “new printer”, and Ubuntu found it and installed the drivers just like that.  Given the history of struggle between linux users and about any peripheral (without some geekfest driver compilation), that was a beautiful thing. PCs and Macs were equally easy.

So, there you go, an uncompensated recommendation of the MFC-8890DW.  While I’ve only had it for a short time (I’ll report back if something nasty happens), and I haven’t been able to configure some of the interesting fax to and from email features simply because of lack of time or need for them, I can say that this thing appears to be a good purchase.  It saves me time, space, and the frustration of having to wonder if my prints or faxes are going to happen any time soon or with the quality that I’d like.  I think that’s worth $400.