Product Description

The network-ready, laser MFC-8660DN multifunction offers everything you need for a fully functional office. Features Hi-Speed USB 2.0 and Ethernet interfaces for wired or wireless networking, up to 30 pages per minute print speed, color or black/white scanning, PC fax and much more.

Product Details

• Brand: Brother
• Dimensions: 48.20 pounds

Features

• Up to 30 ppm laser printing and copying - Multi-Copying (up to 99) with enlargement and reduction
• 32MB standard memory (Expandable to 544MB) - 300-sheet input paper capacity
• Printer Resolution: Up to 1200 x 1200 dpi - Interface: Hi-Speed USB 2.0, Parallel and Ethernet (cables not included)
• Copier: Legal-size copying on document glass or ADF -Copy speed: Up to 30 cpm -Multi-copying, up to 99 copies - Copy reduction and enlargement from 25%-400% in 1% increments
• Color Scanner: Legal-size flatbed scanning - Color or B/W scanning: up to 19,200 x 19,200 dpi (interpolated)- Resolution: up to 600 x 2400 dpi optical

Customer Reviews

Best MFC solution for under $300
In common with some of the other reviewers, I purchased the 8660DN from Costco on a coupon deal. Additionally, I was aiming to replace a old Apple Laserwriter and an HP3210 Photosmart multifunction that I hve learned to hate. Finally, I just left the corporate world and needed a home office fax machine. I was able to discuss the Brother, HP, Xerox, and Canon solutions with their respective factory reps at the 2008 Macworld exhibition in SF back in January, as well as demo most of the applicable products. So, the Brother unit won the battle of live demos and Costco pricing.

Here is how the 8660DN dealt with these missions:
1. Faxing - It's full featured and just a great performer. I have to send faxes every week due to health insurance and investment order processing. It's easy, fast and has all the memory a home office could ever use.

2. Printing - My home network has four computers attached running Mac OSX (10.4 and 10.5) in addition to a laptop running Windows XP. I have WiFi and hardwired connections. The MFC does a great job of printing in both single sided and duplex mode from all our computers.
***** ONE ISSUE: Do NOT plug the MFC power cord into the same circuit as the network router or any other network hub. When the MFC awakes from sleep, the startup power surge is sufficient to glitch the hub and lose the network address assignment necessitating a re-cycle of the MFC power switch to reconnect to the network. *****

NOTE: The above issue was diagnosed by Brother's excellent (in my opinion) customer support. I moved the power around, and now it's fine.

3. Scanning: Both network and USB connected scanning work well and produce moderate to good quality scans. It's not a replacement for a dedicated scanner, but it's fine for home office work. Also, the ADF works really well.

4. Copying. It's just great and is a much used features. The enlarge and reduce functions work well with presets for letter, legal, etc.

Conclusion: This is a great unit

Little quirks aside the 8660 is a great bargain.
I bought this printer after reading some reviews posted here. But more importantly I've used Brother printers for some time now and had faith in this quality-oriented company.

Rather than re-hash what's been said already I'll list my pros and cons:

1) This is a 'Energy Star' Vista ready printer. Have Vista on your computer? Just plug this in using your USB port and it's set to go. Haven't tried it on a network so can't comment.
2) Scanner operation is razor sharp. Scans are fast and control over contrast is easy.
3) Faxing operation works as expected and is foolproof.
4) Toner cost is low compared to other printers. The high volume toner cartridge is good for 7000 sheets and can be had for around $70 ( close to one penny a print-out.
5) Drum is said to give 20,000 sheets of service can't comment because I haven't printed out that many sheets but the printer does have a feature that allows you to view how many total sheets have been printed!
6) When it was new I used the default settings. Print-outs were very fast ( @600 DPI). Had problems with wrinkled envelopes though. Try as I might could not fix. Checked manual and it said to release tension springs in back which kept paper tight to drum. No improvement. Bummer! Everything was great about this printer but one of the most important operations. ARRGH! Then I remembered similar problem with another printer. Went into the 8660's properties and changed the DPI to 1200. Left the springs in back released. Tried an envelope. BINGO! The speed of the printer was reduced by half but the print-outs were sharper than ever and the envelopes came out perfect! Problem solved!
7) Cons: It's a lttle noisy. Umm...can't think of anything else.

A great printer and can be had at discounted prices because it seems Brother wants the 8860 to take its' place. Check it out ( I've seem them as low as $300- at that price it's a steal! )

Great machine with one caveat
This is my second Brother multi-function machine. The first one lasted forever, and we decided that it was time to upgrade. Also figured that getting this at Costco made it easy to return if we didn't like it. It periodically goes on special with a coupon, so that helped, too.

This is my first network MFC. We had a Hawking Print Server attached to the old unit, and that worked okay. This one installed very quickly and easily. The network printing has been reliable, whether we are wired or wireless. The duplexing works great, and is a real advantage. Beside a lot of printing, I've done scanning, copying, and faxing. It works great. I don't have it set up to receive faxes as that's more than I want to deal with right now, and I was getting spam faxes.

The copying often cuts off the left edge, but it is usually not a big deal. If it's really important, I can readjust the position. The scanning to my laptop works great, but it's not the quality of a stand-alone scanner. I scanned a lot of old family photos, and decided to go with a Canon CanoScan 8600F, which gives a little better image, and has great software.

The one thing that bugs me is that it wrinkles envelopes. I've tried the different settings, but that hasn't helped. This seems to be a design problem, and I've seen comments about it before, but hadn't seen anything about it just before I bought the unit. I went to Brother's FAQs and it is addressed. I haven't taken the time to try all of their suggested fixes, but wish that this wasn't such a problem. We are considering getting an inexpensive printer to just handle envelopes (we're a SOHO).

I've had the unit for about 6 months, and two of us print off it in our home office. We still have the starter toner cartridge in, which surprises me. I bought a backup high-yield cartridge, but it's just been sitting around for months. Hey, I'm not complaining about that.

Overall, it's a great unit, and a lot of bang for the buck.