Brother HL-1440 Laser Printer: A Workhorse Well Worth The Money

Working for a non-profit means everything revolves around cost. When the time came to purchase a new printer for one of our workstations, that was the main factor in my purchasing decision. 

I am a big fan of laser printers and have owned one since they first became popular about ten years ago. We don't print or copy in color at the office due to the cost. Our output consists mostly of letters as well as educational matter and reports. 

As I browsed through various catalogs, the printer which seemed to be the best value for the money is the Brother HL-1440 Laser Printer. At $299 it came in on the low end of laser printers. I factored in the cost of the toner ($55 for a 3,000 sheet yield cartridge; $80 for a 6,000 sheet yield cartridge) as well as the drum ($170 and should last through 20,000 sheets) and came out with a figure of about 2¢ per copy. This is on par with the cost of copies in our copy machine as well, making this printer a good value. 

Setting up the printer was easy. Our systems are still currently running Windows 98, and there were no problems installing the software. Recently, I upgraded my home computer to Windows XP and had problems with the Brother software for my home workcenter. Knowing that, I'd advise that installing the Brother HL-1440 Laser Printer on a machine with Windows XP may require downloading the software from the Brother website. 

The software also installs a HL-1440 Interactive Help right on the desktop. For anyone without a good knowledge of computers - specifically printers - this can be a blessing as it takes you through the steps to clear any problems which may occur. 

Features of the Brother HL-1440 Laser Printer: 

Up to 15 ppm print speed 
1200 x 600 dpi resolution 
2MB standard memory, upgradeable to 34MB 
Optimized drivers for Windows® 95/98/98SE/Me/2000 Professional, NT® 4.0, XP and iMac™/iBook™/G3/G4 
Parallel and USB ports standard PCL4 emulation 
Universal 250-sheet adjustable paper cassette 
Single sheet manual bypass with straight paper path for envelopes and thick media 
Shockwave-based animated help system 
Brother Solutions Center (requires Internet access) 
Manual duplex, watermark, poster and N-up print modes 
Energy Star Compliant 
Optional external Ethernet interface 

The Brother HL-1440 Laser Printer comes with a 1 year warranty. 

We don't generally do anything with heavy graphics, so the amount of memory that the printer was shipped with is adequate for our use. The print comes out very crisp and clean. We haven't had any problems with mysterious in spots on the printouts where they shouldn't be. There also have not been any paper jams - even with envelopes which were my nemesis on my old printer for many years. The tray holds an impressive 250 sheets of paper which means long periods of time without having to fumble around to fill the tray. 

We have been using the Brother HL-1440 Laser Printer for 8 months and haven't had to replace either the drum or the toner cartridge as of yet. I am very happy with the performance and quality of this low-cost printer and would recommend it to anyone. If you will be doing printing which consists of a lot of graphics, I would recommend upgrading the memory.