I purchased this printer June 18, 2008 from Amazon for $589.98 and it has been the best plain-paper printer I've ever had.

The printer is very heavy when assembled, but all of the consumables are very easy to pull out. There's a collection tray, roller tray, and a rack that holds all of the toner cartridges. These and the paper tray all come out of the front. The fuser comes out of the back. All of the pieces are intuitive to install and the manual was not required. Remove the orange bits, install where they fit or are labelled.

The printer drivers are easy to install, and I installed only the base drivers. Set-up of the wireless network was the longest portion, but I was printing in 30minutes.

The wireless network config is great. It's easier to enter your key from a direct connection; however, you CAN configure it through the operator panel. Even in sleep mode, it will stay on the network and wake up for your prints.

Only once ever out of 18 months have I had any sort of connectivity issues, and that's after I moved to a new router which forced a hostname change onto the printer.

Hard-wired network configuration is about the same, but it will pick up DHCP on initial plug-in and be searchable on your network.

If all else fails, or you don't have a network, you can use the USB port for direct attached printing.

The printer has 64MB of ram built in, and supports both PCL and Brotherscript, which is roughly the same as postscript.

The printer driver has built in duplex and booklet modes. In both modes, printing is put onto both sides of the paper. Being a square printer with a non-linear paper path, the pages curl a bit, especially when duplexed. It's really not too bad.

When you print in booklet mode, it automatically re-orders the pages and prints them 2-up duplexed so you can staple down the spine. More than 5 sheets (20 pages) becomes difficult to properly fold. You can print all 200 pages of your book this way, but you'll never bind it.

Instead, you can print 20 pages booklet style, then staple that signature, then stack the signatures. I've found this works well for up to 240 pages, after which it's really important to bind the signatures together more securely.

Previously, I used an HP Color Laserjet 2500. The Brother blows away all HP printers. The Brother printer does not wake up every 4 hours to rebaance toner. The Brother sits quietly, waiting to print. If it's not used for a short while, it goes into power-save mode. You can configure this down to never, but mine is set to 15 minutes.

The color printing is true, though as always, laser printers produce an uneven sheen which is not suitable for archivale quality photos. It is excellent for newsletters, documents, maps, email, books, charts, etc. The duplexing and booklet modes, selectable from the print dialogue, allow you to make documents that look very professional.

The toner cartridges that come with the printer are definitely "starter" grade. I ran out at 3 months with about 50 sheets (reservations, maps, documents) per week. The high capacity cartridges have lasted MUCH longer and are well worth the cost.

Refilled cartridges seem to have complaints of toner leaks, so I recommend against them. Instead, if you print lightly, there is a way to reset the toner cartridge page count and you can keep using it until it is literally out of toner. Either way, Stick with Brother's cartridges and use their recycling service when you're done.

Plain paper printing is excellent. Card-stock will curl the page more, but overall is good. Envelopes print OK, but will wrinkle and curl more. There is a setting on the fuser on the back to open the gap for envelope printing and this helps substantially.

Transparency and iron-on sheets MUST be set to that type of paper in the print settings. Otherwise, they will stick to the fuser and transfer goo onto the next 10-20 sheets you print. If you print a bunch of iron-on sheets as plain paper, then about sheet 4 it will stick to the fuser, wind up inside, and require about 30 minutes to dismantle and clean out.

Finally, there is a USB port on the front of the printer for printing off of a memory stick. I regret to say I've had no need for this and haven't even tried it. With the wireless access, I've been able to put the printer out of the way without making a cord mess.