The one button that never worked on my Brother MFC-8660DN

I'm addicted to the wonderful convenience of my brother multi-function laster printer/fax/scanner. It's incredibly useful.

After moving and upgrading to Windows Vista I could no longer use PaperPort Pro 11 due to Windows Vista compatibility issues (they should be resolved but I'll address that later).

I always image my documents and have been frustrated with eFax's expensive $0.10 per page after 120 page limit per month. You see, eFax had become my back-up imaging tool. Fax the documents to myself and save the e-mailed .pdf file. But when I started receiving $30 in excess fax fees I realized I needed to fix the problem.

The first attempt was to learn how to use the actual SCAN button on the 8660-DN. It's the one in between fax and copy.

After two hours with technical support I could not get it working. I'm almost certain there's a network communication issue - most likely I have to open a special port with the windows firewall.

I can, however, walk across the room, place the document in the scanner, walk back to the pc, click the scan option from the brother control center and it does deliver a scanned document to me. less than idea, but I'm waiting to see how I can actually fix it. One of my best friends has the same scanner and promised to work his way through technical support and get it solved - we'll see what happens.

The idea is very compelling.

The only down side is the limited scan resolution option. I'd rather avoid 800k per page.

Regards, makingourway