I have never been one to enjoy my printing experiences. I print as little as possible (preferring to use electronic documents) and when I do print I often run into problems. It doesn’t matter which operating system I’m working with, printing problems are sure to follow. Today, my Brother 440CN all in one colour printer embarrassed me as I promised that I would be able to print off a friend’s resume before he went to a job interview.

He arrived, I printed off a test document from firefox to make sure it was still working. Because I hadn’t used it in a while it spent a good 5 minutes cleaning itself, then it printed off the test page OK. Next came the time to print the resume. All of a sudden the printer complains the the Cyan cartridge is nearly empty. I thought no problem. Since this is the first warning I have had about this, that won’t be a problem. In addition the resume is just black and white so a cyan cartridge is not needed.
I though wrong.

The printer refused to do anything. Even when I attempt to change the settings to black and white only in the print dialog, the printer still refused to do anything.
There is a little disclaimer in the bottom of the print dialog saying that the printer will shut down if one or more of the cartridges is empty. Disclaimer is accurate… but please!!!

All I can say is that I don’t have time to deal with a printer that may or may not work on any given Sunday – so this one’s going to the heap and I’m going shopping for a laser printer. At least you get some warning when a laser printer it going to run out of toner.

I cannot stress enough how important these lack of features are on the Brother 440CN. If you are looking for a printer, I would recommend you choose a laser printer. Failing that, make sure that the ink jet will still perform with low ink in one or more of the cartridges empty.