Oh, Brother, where is thy brain?!

I am a small business owner, computer technician and web developer, and I've used in my work experience an untold number of fax machines of various designs, features and configurations. I have also in the past supported various organizations in the acquisition and maintenance of fax machines.

I can tell you that this machine, the Brother 1820C, performs adequately as far as incoming/outgoing faxes, copying and such, but still, I urge you...DO NOT BUY THIS MACHINE.

I never ran one single color copy or printout on my 1820, but a couple of days ago the stupid thing stopped printing, with the LCD display indicating that ALL four of my ink cartridges (black, cyan, magenta and yellow) are empty. The odds of all these cartridges running out at the same time are so ridiculously long that it boggles the mind!

Today, at a complete inconvenience to me during a busy day, I purchased a new black cartridge (around $20) with the hopes of just running the machine in black, as I never used the other colors.

Did this work? Nope. It seems that the print head wears down if you try to run it with empty cartridges (I went online looking for a solution), so the whole printing process shuts down and is set to prevent any attempts at override.

There is poor design, plain and simple. What were these people thinking when they engineered this piece of garbage?!

There is NO WAY I'm going to spend $50 - $60 more on cartridges just because they MIGHT be empty. And I don't have a couple of hours to waste fussing with a lousy fax machine that's not even 3 months old.

Frankly, this experience makes me reluctant to ever buy a BROTHER product again. Nor, can I in good conscience recommend the company's products to my clients without mentioning my experience.