BROTHER MFC-1780 RIBBON CARTRIDGE

Brother MFC-1780 Review

Overview:

Before inkjets became the popular standard for ink based print technology, thermal ribbon printers and fax machines were common. The Brother MFC-1780 is an example of an early attempt by Brother to combine fax, print, and copy technology into a single, comprehensive unit. Unfortunately, this ancient model has barely stood the test of time.

Pros:

Though the Brother MFC-1780 is by no means suitable for any type of high volume printing, the device is fully capable of executing very basic print and copy tasks, as well and sending and receiving faxes. The unit’s print speeds, however slow, are made possible by basic PC host technology, though users with newer operating systems may find it difficult even to connect to the device.

Fax functions are navigatable by way of a very basic 16 character LCD display, and features such as automatic speed dialing are incorporated into the unit. The Brother MFC-1780 even offers users a very limited fax page memory which is valuable in the event of a paper outage. When using the fax page memory, fax data is stored internally and can then be printed to hard copy at a later time, though this device in particular has very little internal RAM.

Cons:

Brother no longer offers support for the Brother MFC-1780 or any of the multifunctional devices in the line, so users of the unit are on their own, so to speak, if mechanical failures do arise. The few units that remain operational will offer users cripplingly slow print and copy speeds coupled with atrocious print quality.

The unit was designed primarily as a fax machine with host PC connectability present almost as an afterthought. This is evident in the unit’s print quality settings, which mirror those of a standard fax machine. Horizontal quality is locked at a meager 203 dots per inch, while vertical quality is selectable between 98 dot per inch standard quality, 196 dot per inch fine / photo quality, and the barely adequate 392 line per inch superfine / photo quality. Keep in mind, the term, “photo,” quality should be taken with a grain of salt when looking at a dinosaur such as the Brother MFC-1780. The device’s gray scale of 64 levels also severely limits its capabilities of printing imagery.