Review on Brother HL2230 Monochrome Laser Printer by Terry Moore

Apparently I made a deal based on the current price which is between $80-$90. and I bought free shipping from Revain on 12/20/2012. It works fast, prints well and was ALMOST easy to install. I use it as a shared printer on my home network (it's not a network printer but can be used through a router) but the software CD that came with it was a problem. The computer it is connected to runs XP, but the rest runs on later versions. If you want to share it, you need to install all the necessary drivers on the host computer or separately on other computers. You can't just use the Add Printer feature on other computers because even if it finds the right printer, it doesn't load the necessary driver. You can't load the driver from the disc without starting the installation, and then it stops if the computer you're trying to add it to doesn't have a printer attached. I suppose I could have found or downloaded the correct driver for Windows 7 on a disc somewhere, but after about an hour I gave up, plugged the printer into another computer and started it up. The driver was found immediately and everything was fine, so the printer returned to the host computer. The paper comes out a little curled, but this has happened to me with other laser printers, so if that's a problem for anyone, buy a better printer, buy better paper (I've had cheap paper for about 12 years), use thicker paper or use an inkjet printer. I prefer laser printers because I don't use them often and I don't have to worry about toner evaporation. This unit replaced several HP 5L Laser Inkjet Printers that had served well for decades, but toner cartridges were becoming such a problem that, based on price and quality, replacement seemed the most viable alternative. The last 'new' toner cartridge for my 5L turned out to be defective and spilled all the toner in the printer, on me and on the floor. Once the tape was removed, the toner just flowed out like water. I'm giving 4 stars because I think it wouldn't be too difficult for Brother to just let me download the driver from the hard drive or tell me to do more than contact my administrator to set it up as a shared printer to add, but printer alone is worth 5 stars depending on how much I paid and how it works. If the current price is still near the $90 mark, I would consider switching to an all-in-one machine. By the way, if paper manuals are important to you, you won't get any with this printer. just a link to download the pdf file. It doesn't come with a cable to connect it to a computer, but I got one from Revain for less than fifty dollars. , Epson, Dell free shipping and that's no reason for me to downgrade the rating. I ended up buying an extra universal toner, but other reviewers have suggested ways to bypass the toner indicator and increase mileage, so I'll try that when the time comes.