Brother MFC-J995DW printer/scanner/fax, wireless

[ssfc72]

I have finally gave in, and bought a new printer.  It is currently on sale at Staples for $199 (regular price $270)

I researched the different makes of printers and came to the conclusion that the Brother printers were what I was looking for. The Brother web site has Linux drivers available for download and I can get non OEM ink refill cartridges at a cheaper cost than the OEM, from the internet.
I stayed away from HP printers ( even though they do support the Linux OS ) because of the cost of their OEM print cartridges and HP also tends to cripple their ink cartridges with software that will stop you from using non OEM print cartridges and if the cartridge goes past it's expiry date, it won't allow you to print from that cartridge, and it may even stop printing from the cartridge when it thinks the ink cartridge is empty but the cartridge still does have ink in it

This model of Brother printer ( Inkvestment Tank ) has 4 large individual ink cartridges which is claimed to do 1800 pages (about a year of printing??).  It has a 2 year warranty.

So, I downloaded and installed the one Linux printer driver (there are a few different Linux drivers, depending on which Distro you are using) onto my Mint 19 notebook computer.  The install was easy and was successful.
Once I told the printer what my wifi password was, it was able to print pages right away.

April 16, 2019,  Disregard this line!  -   Apparently the scanner does not work over the wifi because I had to plug in a usb cable to get the scanner to work.
 
April 16, 2019,  I had to re-install the Brother Driver due to Mint 19 crashing and having to re-install Mint 19.
During the 2nd Driver install, I found out that I could input the IP address given in the Menu on the printer LCD screen.
Wireless scanning, using the Simple Scan program, now works! :-)

Scanning a page works very nicely using the Simple Scam program that comes with the Mint Distro.

I also chose this make/model of printer because it does handle printing 4 X 6" photo printing paper.

This printer/scanner is nice and quiet and quick printing, compared to my old Kodak ESP 5250 multifunction printer.
I haven't yet, tried to see if the duplex printing of both sides of a sheet of paper, works with the Linux driver.

April 16, 2019,  During the second install of the Brother printer driver, I had very great difficulty getting the installer to accept the model of the printer, it was asking me to input.  I must have been making typing mistakes because it took about 10 times before I got the installer to accept the printer model that I was inputting. This is a very poor printer installer program, when it is so fussy on requiring  the precise model number.  The program should list the model numbers and let you choose the correct printer that you are setting up.

[Jason]

Thanks for reporting this, Bill. Sounds like a very good printer. Glad to see their is an alternative manufacturer with good Linux support.

I bought an HP OfficeJet Pro 9710 last year. It was cheaper than yours ($120) but still more than I've ever paid for a printer as I wanted to get something that was more durable. It doesn't print as high resolution as yours which is expected. I was still using the starter cartridges until recently when the colour ran out. It was odd because one week it was showing that the colour was low but didn't give a warning and the next week, they were empty and needed replacing.
Your comment about HP cartridges expiring makes sense in that vein as it's the only thing that makes sense why they have ink one week and the next week with no printing they're suddenly out of ink. Thankfully my cartridges can be refilled, at least the ones after the initial starters ones and you can buy refilled ones cheaper online as well.

I checked with Inkjet Island (think that's the name?) at Lansdowne Place and they do refill them and they work but they can't refill the initial starter cartridges unfortunately as they contain HP setup code or something so they will only work once. The guy said is would be about $10 per cartridge refilling the next time I had cartridges but that they would give messages from the printer saying they weren't HP cartridges and wouldn't show how much ink you had, etc.

Printers generally hate me so I'm not sure I want to take that chance and in any case I'd still have to buy colour cartridges (and black will be likely due soon, too). I needed to get some documents printed right away so I had to get the colour cartridges now. And then I signed up for HP's Instant Ink service. They send you cartridges to start with and you pay a monthly rate that gives you so many pages a month (regardless of how much ink you use). Unused pages can be rolled over for up to 3 months and the printer tells them when you're getting close to running out of ink and they ship more automatically. It's probably not the most cause efficient (unless you're printing photos, I guess) but it should be very convenient and it spreads the cost out for me which is helpful on a low income. I signed up for 50 pages/month for $4 CAD/month.

[Jason]

Regarding scanning, are you sure you didn't just need the USB cable to install the initial drivers? I had to do that with my HP but it worked fine after. I can also scan to a thumb drive which I expect your printer has, too.

Send any faxes yet? ;-) That's the one feature I haven't tried on my mine and probably never will. It'd require me to setup Magic Jack next to it since we don't have a regular land line. And I don't really think it's worth the bother.

[ssfc72]

No, to scan a document, the usb cable is needed when running under a Linux Distro, using the Simple Scan program.  Maybe running under Windows, scanning would work over the wifi, but I don't use Windows, so I don't know.

No faxes sent, I don't have any need to use the fax feature.

There is a cheaper Brother printer (MFC-J690DW) for $149 (was $99 when I was buying), at Staples, that I believe does photo printing on 4 X 6" photo paper and does duplex printing but I liked the ink tank feature of the model that I bought.

[ssfc72]

Note, I have modified my first post, to update the info on the printer driver install process.

After Mint 19.1 crashed on me, and I re-installed Mint 19.1 Cinnamon, I had to re-install the Brother printer driver, that is available on their web page.
During the second install of the printer driver, I discovered a few new issues and solutions.

[Jason]

What were the new issues? And how did you solve them?

[ssfc72]

Jason, see the first post of mine, in this topic.

[Jason]

Jason, see the first post of mine, in this topic.

Thanks. I just thought it was the last paragraph that had changed. The added dates showing the changes helped a lot to me seeing what was new Glad you got wireless scanning working. It seemed really odd to me that it wouldn't work over wireless. Btw, you can use strikeout over the font to show that you posted something that isn't accurate anymore like this.