Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We all know how the usual printer scam works. Printer companies offer a low price for their hardware to lock you into buying their highly profitable ink and toner cartridges. Then, their printers complain about low ink and toner levels long before the cartridge is really empty to try to encourage even greater use of expensive consumables. Thus, a savvy user waits until printer quality noticeably degrades. Usually, pulling out the cartridge and shaking it a bit improves performance for a little while, extending the cartridge lifetime. Finally, the cartridge is well and truly empty and it's time for a replacement. Brother has developed an innovative and extortionate wrinkle. Not content to let the user decide when the cartridge actually needs replacement, my Brother MFC-9325CW printer locks up and refuses to print until the allegedly empty cartridge is replaced. To add insult to injury, the printer even refuses to print black and white until the user replaces a reportedly empty color cartridge. After much online searching, I found a write-up at helpowl.com that explains how to reset the toner indicator: "Push the button on the front of the printer to open the cartridge door. Don't remove the cartridges. Push the Clear/Back button to bring up a reset menu. There are 9 different toner functions (for simplicity, three K's, three C's, three M's, and three Y's). For each of these nine functions in turn, push the O.K. button and then push it again to indicate `Reset'. After a few seconds, it will say `Accepted' and will then display a message that the cover is open. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each of the 9 toner functions. When finished, close the door and the status bar will be reset to normal with no error message." By resetting the toner alert in this manner, you can squeeze the last bit of life out of the toner cartridge. Brother sure works hard to make you replace cartridges before they're actually dead. Overall, the Brother printer has worked well, and I am otherwise satisfied with its performance. However, I am outraged at the extent to which this Brother printer that refuses to print unless you buy a new toner cartridge, even when there's life left in the old one. The reset process was hard to find and seemingly designed to deter all but the most determined user. I'm further appalled that the printer refuses to print black and white when the black toner level is fine and it's a color toner cartridge that is allegedly low. Thus I'm awarding only one star, and I will be avoiding Brother products in the future.