Brother's New Color Laser Multifunction Printers

Brother International on Tuesday introduced a new model line of color laser Multi Function Centers (MFCs). The MFC-9000 series are Mac and PC-compatible. The MFC-9440CN debuts in June for $699; the MFC-9840CDW arrives in September for $849.

The MFC-9000 series use the same engine that powers Brother’s HL-4000 series color laser printer. They can print up to 21 pages per minute in either monochrome or black and white, at up to 2400 x 600 dots per inch (DPI). Both models sport built-in Ethernet networking and also come with USB 2.0 interfaces to connect directly to a host computer. The printers are PictBridge-compatible and offer PCL6 and BR-Script3 (PostScript 3) emulation. A built-in color scanner scans at up to 1200 x 2400 DPI optical, and you can fax using a 33.6Kbps modem.

The MFC-9440CN comes with a 35-page automatic document feeder (ADF) and 300-sheet paper input capacity. The $849 MFC-9840CDW steps up with built-in 802.11b/g wireless networking capability, built-in duplexing for two-sided print, copy, scan and fax, 50-sheet ADF, legal-sized platen for copying and scanning longer documents, a 5-line LCD display, more speed dial locations and twice the memory (128MB).

Brother will offer “standard” or “high-yield” toner cartridges in both black and color. Standard black toner cartridges yield 2,500 pages, while high-yields last up to 5,000 pages; standard color carts yield 1,500 pages, while their high-yield counterparts yield up to 4,000 pages.

The MFC-9000 series requires Mac OS X v10.2.4 or later.

Brother’s Web site had not been updated with information about the new models as Macworld posted this article.