Bluetooth printing
WHAT’S HOT
offers several advantages: First, you won’t need
to connect cables to the printer, just turn it on and
go. Second, unlike the IRDA connection that
other printers use for wireless connection, Bluetooth
doesn’t require you to line up the ports. Your
printer and Pocket PC only have to be near enough to
each other (within 3 feet) to print.
Brother MPrint MW-140BT
(click the image above for the full-sized picture)
The WM-140BT is very small (only 3.9" wide, 6.3" tall, and
0.7" deep) and very light (only 0.66 lbs). It’s
not quite shirt pocket size but it would fit easily
into a pant pocket, a briefcase, or a backpack. It has no moving parts
except for the paper feed mechanism and requires no
ink or toner to operate. It’s also very quiet. You could easily use it in a library or study hall
without disturbing your neighbors.
SETUP
What comes in the
box? (clockwise from top left)
USB cable, 50 Sheets thermal paper, Software/Drivers
CD, manual, AC adapter/charger, and MW-140BT Printer
The Brother MW-140BT Mobile Printer comes with
everything you see above. Before you use the
printer, there are three steps you need to do to set
it up: First you have to install the
paper cassette. Second, you have to install the
software. Finally, you have to set up the
Bluetooth connection to your Pocket PC. Here’s
what all that entails:
Installing the Paper
The thermal paper for the MW-100 series printers comes
in a special paper cassette which is sealed in an
air-tight package. The package will also protect
the paper from modest heat so you don’t have to be
concerned with pre-exposed paper. The paper
cassette has picture instructions (see photos below)
that show you how to convert the box into the form
used to load the paper into the printer. Below,
you can see pictures of the cassette as it comes out
of the air-tight package and as it looks when it’s
converted to load into the printer. The only
problem with the picture instructions is that they
don’t give a good indication of how to orient the
cassette when you place it in the printer.
MW-100 series paper
cassette
paper cassette loaded into the MW-140BT
Mobile Printer showing the correct orientation
Installing the
Software
The CD-ROM that comes with the printer provides
software and drivers for using the printer with a
Pocket PC, a Palm, or a Windows laptop or desktop
system. The CD will auto-start on systems that
support it, or you can run Setup from the root folder
on the CD-ROM. When you do, you’ll get the
screen shown below.
Brother Mobile Printing
Software Setup — main screen
You can elect to install driver and support software
for Windows-based, Pocket PC, or Palm computers.
You can also consult the Software Guide or Owner’s
Manual. Selecting the Pocket PC option gets you
the screen shown below.
Pocket PC Setup –
install choices
There are two programs provided for printing from the
Pocket PC. Brother mobile printing software
(also known as MPrint) provides more options for
printing, but less specific support for Pocket Word,
Pocket Excel, and Inbox/Messaging. PrintPocketCE
provides better support for those formats. For
either selection above, you’ll get the screen shown
below to allow you to choose which Pocket PC operating
system your device has.
Pocket PC Setup –
operating system choices
Once you select your
operating system, the software installs using the standard ActiveSync
"Install New Software" functionality. It should be noted
that the installation routine installs the MPrint and PrintPocketCE
for Brother software in Main Memory regardless of whether you select
to do so or not. However, if you try to install the software in
anyplace other than the "default location," the MPrint software
won’t work. This isn’t very good installation routine programming. Other program installers will automatically recognize the operating
system and warn you not to install in an invalid location.
Setting up the Bluetooth
Connection
Setting up the Bluetooth Connection may differ
slightly, depending on which Pocket PC you have.
The following will show how it looks on the hp 2215 iPAQ.
Before you set up the connection, your printer should
be fully charged and turned on. You’ll also have
to make sure the Bluetooth radio is turned on using
the blue switch on the side of the printer.
MW-140BT Status LEDs (top to bottom) charging,
charged/On, Bluetooth radio on
MW-140BT side view showing (left to right)
power on/off, Bluetooth on/off, USB port, and power connector
The Bluetooth connection to the printer is done via
the Serial Port (emulation) profile. The
Bluetooth software on your Pocket PC doesn’t "know"
that it’s talking to a printer. As far as
Bluetooth is concerned, it’s just some serial port
profile supporting device. The specifics of
working with the printer are handled by the printer
support software. That’s at least partly because
WindowsCE/Pocket PC doesn’t have any built-in support
for printing. Since you’re not working with
a specialized Bluetooth profile, you’ll begin by
"browsing" or "exploring" the device.
Bluetooth connection –
first select explore/browse
When you start browsing,
you may find more than one Bluetooth device present. The one you
want to select is the MW-140BTxxxx like the one shown below.
Bluetooth connection — next select the
MW-140BT
After you select the printer as the device to browse,
you’ll be asked for the "passkey." The passkey
is the last four digits of the printer’s serial
number, but, before you turn your printer over to find
them, notice that they’re appended to the device name
that the printer provides to Bluetooth. (In my
case, my serial number ends in "4331.")
Bluetooth connection — enter passkey
Once
you’ve entered the passkey, you’ll see something like the screen shown
below. The only profile that the printer supports is Serial Port
emulation so select it and press next.
Bluetooth connection — select the Serial
Port profile
That completes the Bluetooth connection setup. From now on, your Pocket PC will recognize a serial
connection to the MW-140BT printer.
PRODUCT FEATURES
Hardware
As I mentioned in the
"Hot" section, the MW-140BT is quite small. You
can get an idea of how small from the picture I showed
earlier with the printer next to a ruler. To
give you a better feel of the size, here are some
other shots that show the size compared to an iPAQ
Pocket PC, a quarter, and Compact Flash and SD memory
cards.
MW-140BT printer shown with hp 2215 Pocket
PC, CF & SD memory cards, and a quarter for size comparison
One thing I didn’t mention in previously is that the
printer is ready to print as soon as you turn it on.
There is no "warm-up" period. The printer has a
"sleep mode" where it continues to "look" for an
incoming Bluetooth signal, but otherwise draws less
power. I found that it was so quick to start up
that I hardly ever left the printer on to make use of
the "sleep mode." Instead I turned it off after
I printed and then on when I needed it again.
The printer uses "A7" size (2.9"x4.1") paper. Since
that’s not standard (8.5"x11") paper, the
driver software automatically resizes the printing so that a full page will print on
one A7-sized sheet.
Below, you can see a picture of the printer as it looks after
having just printed a document. The paper feeds
from the bottom of the cassette, through the thermal
printing head, and finally exits through the slot as
shown. We’ll take a closer look at the
printing results later but I’ll say now that I was very
impressed by how readable the text was.
MW-140BT Mobile Printer
having just printed a Pocket Excel document
There are two reasons
to go with thermal printing as Brother did with the MW-100 series.
First, thermal printing is quiet. Second, thermal printing has
far fewer moving parts than other printing methods. Because of
this, thermal printing uses less power. Brother advertises 100
pages printed on a full charge. I found that it actually exceed
that in page-after-page printing. In actual use, especially if
you leave the printer on between actual printing, you’ll get somewhat
less. With the standard 50-page cassette, I found that I changed
cassettes before I had to recharge.
I should also note that Brother has done some major
"tweaking" on thermal printing. If you’re used to the
smelly, streaky pages that fade almost as soon as you pull them from
the printer and turn black if you leave them in your pocket, you’re
in for a pleasant surprise. The Brother thermal paper feels just
like normal paper. It doesn’t streak if you run your finger across
it. It’s also manufactured to resist degradation. I found
the printing quite durable, especially compared to what I was used to
from thermal printing.
Software – MPrint
Brother’s MPrint
Software — main screen
The first of two programs
that come on the CD-ROM is called Brother MPrint. The main screen
is shown above. This screen is essentially just a "launching
program" which runs the various sub-programs shown above. Here’s what I found in each of the MPrint sub-programs taken from the
top down as they appear in the launch program:
Note Print
Brother’s Note Print
program with the "Printer" menu showing
Brother’s
Note Print program will allow you to select Pocket Word notes.
The program uses standard "File Open" functionality.
Because it’s a standard File Open dialog, you’ll be
limited to files from "My Documents" in Main Memory or
on any Storage Card (unless that Storage Card has an "ignore_my_docs"
file in it’s root folder, in which case it ignores any
files on the card entirely). You’ll also be able
to see files one folder level deep in "My Documents".
You can go directly to "Print" or "Preview…" the
note with the screen shown below,
Brother’s Note Print
program — preview screen
On the left
of the Print preview screen, the preview panel shows a thumbnail image
of the note which will be printed. The [Printer setting] button
opens the dialog show below.
Brother’s Screen Capture
program — printer settings
The first three options are set correctly and
shouldn’t need to be changed. Others allow you
to change the orientation, and number of copies
printed. The "Print Mode" option remains a
mystery to me. "( )Global" always remained
grayed out.
Tapping the [Graphics] button brings up the screen shown
below.
Brother’s Screen Capture
program — graphics settings
The Graphics Setting screen allows you to select
between dithering, Error diffusion, or no processing
of graphic images. You can also select whether
the screen image is printed full size or fit to the
paper. You can also access the "Printer
setting" and "Graphics setting" screens using the
"Settings" menu shown below.
Brother’s Note Print
program — Settings menu
The "Settings" menu also has the "Font…" menu, allowing you to set the font
characteristics for unformatted text using the screen
you see below.
The
"Font Setting" screen allows you to select the Font, size,
and modifiers shown above. These settings will be applied to unformatted
text.
Finally, the "Settings" menu has an option
to print the note as an image rather than as text.
Brother’s Note Print
program — Tools menu
The "Tools" menu gives you access to the version
information for the program, an option to update the
file list (in case you’ve added some files since you
started the program), and the "Options…" dialog.
There’s only one option in the Options… dialog: You can choose whether the program confirms when you
quit.
When you select the "Print" option, you’ll get results like
the following:
Example of Brother’s
Note printing
All of the Brother MPrint
program use similar screens and dialogs. While
you are printing from any of the MPrint programs,
you’ll see the following screen.
Brother MPrint print
progress screen
Note that the Print Progress screen has a set of small
icons at the bottom right. The one on the right
shows the current battery charge level So, every
time you print, you know how much battery life you
have left. That’s a nice feature.
Schedule Print
Brother’s Schedule Print
program
Brother’s Schedule Print allows you to print items
from your Calendar. You can select a single
category, all categories, or no categories. Then
you can select individual items from the list.
Brother’s Schedule Print
program — Settings menu
The "Settings" menu has the "Printer…",
"Graphics…", and "Font…" options that we’ve seen
before. The "Template…" option
opens the screen shown below.
Brother’s Schedule Print
program — template settings
As
you can see, this is really just a way of allowing for
use of Brother’s label paper. You can select
whether you want a single label (full page), 2 labels,
or 4 labels. You can also select which of the
appointment fields are printed.
The "Date…" option on the "Settings" menu allows you to select a date or
range of dates using the dialog shown below.
Brother’s Schedule Print
program — date settings
You
can select all dates within a range or dates starting with or ending
with a specific date.
Brother’s Schedule Print
program — Tools menu
The "Tools"
menu gives you the same options we saw in the Note Print program (Version
information… and Options…). It also includes options to update
the display with Today’s schedule information or with all of the most
recent information. Finally, you can select all items on the display
and check or uncheck any selected items. You can also check or
uncheck individual items by clicking anywhere on the item.
Finally, the "Printer"
menu gives you the ability to to display a preview of the checked item(s)
and to print them using the current template. Below, you can see
an example of Schedule printing.
Example of Brother’s Schedule printing
Mail Print
Brother’s E-mail Print
program with the Settings menu shown
Brother’s Mail Print program allows you to print
e-mail messages. The drop-down at the top left
allows you to select which e-mail folder is displayed.
The drop-down at the top right lets you select between
all mail, unread mail, or read mail. The
"Printer" and "Options" menus are identical to the
ones we saw in the Note Print program. The
"Settings" menu has the "Font…" and "Template…"
options like the Schedule Print program and an option
for "Language…" Selecting that option brings
up the dialog below.
Brother’s E-mail Print
program — Language settings
The "Language" option allows you to set which
character set is used to print the e-mail. This
is particularly useful if you receive e-mail from
countries that use Cyrillic, Kanji, or other character
sets.
Selecting "Print" from the main E-mail Print screen
produces results like those shown below.
Example of Brother’s
E-mail printing
As
you can see, the program does not render HTML code.
That makes it not as useful as it could be for
printing formatted e-mail. However, if you get
and want to print a lot of text e-mail, it works fine.
Tasks Print
Brother’s Tasks Print
program with the Settings menu shown
The Tasks Print program performs the same sort of
functionality on Tasks as the Schedule Print program
does on Appointments. The menus are identical. Here is an example of Task printing.
Example of Brother’s
Tasks printing
Contacts Print
Brother’s Contacts Print
program with the Printer menu showing
Brother’s Contact Print program prints contacts in the
same manner as the previous programs print Tasks and
Appointments. Again, the menus are nearly
identical. The one exception is the addition of
the "Eject" option in the "Printer" menu which ejects
the current sheet if there are fewer contacts than
labels. The drop-down on the left will allow you
to filter contacts based on categories. The text
box to the right allows you to enter a contact name to
search for. Below is an example of Contact
printing.
Example of Brother’s
Contact printing
Clipboard Print
Brother’s Clipboard
Print program
Brother’s Clipboard
Print program works exactly as you’d expect: Whatever is on the
Pocket PC clipboard, whether it’s text, graphics, or a combination,
can be printed. This is quite useful if you just want to print
a portion of something on the display. If you can select it, you
can print it. The "Printer Setting", "Graphics",
and "Font" options are exactly as you saw in previous programs.
Screen Capture
Brother’s Screen Capture
program (top right, under the time) appearing over the
File Explorer window
Brother’s Screen Capture program did in fact work.
When you start the program, the control icons you see
just under the time will appear. The [X] shuts
down the capture program. The tool set allows
you to configure it using the dialog shown below.
Brother’s Screen Capture program — configuration
The configuration program will let you set the capture
range to the whole desktop, the client window only, or
the selected portion of the desktop. You can
also set a delay time to allow you to switch the the
screen you want to capture. The delay can be set
up to 10 seconds. The [Printer setting] and
[Graphics setting] buttons
call up the screens you’ve seen before.
When you click on the camera icon, after the delay time
expires, the current screen image is captured, then
the following display appears.
Brother’s Screen Capture
program — final screen
The final screen of the capture program gives you
access to the Printer and Graphics setting screens
again. Pressing the [Print] button with print
the screen you’ve captured with results like those
shown below.
Example of printed
screen capture
Image File Print
Brother’s Image File
Print program — file selection screen
Brother’s
Image File Print program allows you to select an image (bitmap, jpeg,
or png) file and print it.
Once you select a file to print, the program will
switch to the screen shown below.
Brother’s Image File
Print program — final screen
The "Printer Setting" and "Graphics" buttons call up
the same screens we’ve seen in the earlier programs. Pressing the [Print] button gives you results like
that seen below and returns you to the file selection
screen.
Example of Image File
printing (using Error Diffusion)
Utilities
MPrint Utility screen
The MPrint Utility screen gives you control over the
printer driver. You can select which Brother
printer you’re printing to (MW-100, MW-120, or
MW140BT), which port you’re printing from, and call up
further options with the buttons below. There
shouldn’t be any reason to have to change the first
two options as the installation sets them properly.
MPrint Utility –
general options
The
[General] button allows you to set the auto power-off time on the MW-140BT
printer. This is the time (in minutes) that the printer will wait
with no activity before cycling the power off.
MPrint Utility –
Bluetooth1 screen
The Bluetooth1 button gives you access to the
Bluetooth radio’s power-saving settings. You can
select the time (in minutes) that the printer will
wait, without Bluetooth activity, until it puts the
Bluetooth radio in "sleep" mode. In sleep mode,
the radio will power up if it "sees" Bluetooth
activity but otherwise will draw less power that
full-on mode. You can also set the time after
sleep before the printer shuts off completely. Finally, you can set whether the Bluetooth radio works
in full-power or power-saving mode.
Brother Utility –
Bluetooth2 screen
The Bluetooth2 button gives you access to the
Bluetooth security features of the MW-140BT Mobile
Printer. You can change the device name from the
default of "MW140BTxxxx" (where the the x’s represent
the last four digits of the printer’s serial number). You can also change the PIN code (which defaults to
the last four digits of the printer’s serial number).
Finally, clicking on the [Reset settings] button with restore
the default settings on the printer, including the
printer name and PIN code.
Software –
PrintPocketCE for Brother
The second program provided by Brother to work with
the printer is a special version of PrintPocketCE.
There was no documentation for this program either,
but I was able to use it without it. The program
performed flawlessly.
PrintPocketCE for
Brother — startup information screen
When you first start PrintPocketCE, you get the
"splash" screen shown above. It offers a very
simple explanation of the functionality of the
software, but that turns out to be enough.
Selecting any of the three icons on the menu bar will
switch to the selection/settings screens for that type
of document. We’ll look at them in left-to-right
order starting with Pocket Word documents.
Printing Pocket
Word documents
PrintPocketCE for
Brother — selecting a Pocket Word document; Doc
Options menu shown
When you press the Pocket Word icon, you get the
screen shown above that allows you to select which
Pocket Word document you’d like to print. This
is the standard "Open File" type dialog with a
drop-down menu at the top-left that allows you to
select a specific folder and a drop-down menu on the
right that allows you to select the order in which the
files appear. This "File Open" dialog has the
same ("My Documents") limitations I mentioned earlier. Since Pocket Word itself has the same limitations,
that
really isn’t a problem.
The second limitation is that PrintPocketPC only lists (and
thus only prints) Pocket Word documents, Rich Text
Format (RTF) files, and Text files. Even though
Pocket Word can see and load desktop Word documents,
PrintPocketCE cannot.
The "Doc Options" menu gives you some additional control over
printing. The "Go to Pocket Excel printing…"
and "Go to email printing…" options do the same
thing as their respective icons on the menu bar:
They switch to printing those types of documents.
Selecting "Resize Options…" will bring up the dialog
shown below.
PrintPocketCE — Word
document resizing options
The "Resize Options" dialog allows you to reduce or
enlarge all fonts within a Pocket Word document for
best appearance. Keep in mind, though, that the
printer driver itself is already reducing the print
size so that what normally prints on an 8.5"x11" sheet
of paper prints on the A7-sized paper used by the
Brother printer.
The "Doc Options" menu also includes two "flag" options.
If you check the "Quick Print Flag" option, printing
will take place as soon as you click on a Word
document to print. Leaving it unchecked will
bring up options dialogs we’ll see in a moment.
Checking the "Plain Text Flag" option will print the
document in plain text (without formatting).
Leaving it unchecked will print it as its formatted in
Pocket Word. When you select a Pocket Word file
to print, if you don’t have the "Quick Print Flag" checked, you’ll see the Basic Settings dialog below.
PrintPocketCE for
Brother — printing a Pocket Word document — basic
settings
The Basic Settings dialog lets you select a printer.
The program actually defaults to the MW100 Printer so,
the first time you use it, you should change it to the
MW-140BT. When you do, the "Port" entry should
switch to your Pocket
PC’s Bluetooth Serial Port. The
Color/Mono setting should always be Monochrome as the
MW-100 series only prints in black. You should
keep the Custom paper size that gets set when you
select the Brother printer. You can select
either Portrait (tall) or Landscape (wide) printing
orientation. In most cases, you’ll simply press
the [Start Printing] button to begin, but you may also
press the [More Settings] button to get the additional
settings shown below.
PrintPocketCE for
Brother — printing a Pocket Word document — more
Settings
The "More Settings" dialog gives you further control
over margins, form feeds, printing modes and density,
and a few other settings. While using a
Bluetooth connection, you should leave the Serial Port
settings as they are. The IR settings are
irrelevant. Everything else is fair game.
The screen above shows the Print Density drop-down
options. Pressing the [OK] button returns you to
the Basic Settings screen where you can press the
[Start Printing] button to print your Pocket Word
document. Below you’ll see an example of a
printed Pocket Word document.
An example of
PrintPocketCE’s Pocket Word printing
(click on the image above for a blown-up version which
better shows the quality of text printing)
Printing Pocket
Excel documents
PrintPocketCE can also print Pocket Excel documents. When you click on the Pocket Excel icon, you’ll get
the file selection screen shown below.
PrintPocketCE for
Brother — selecting a Pocket Excel document; Excel
Options menu shown
The folder limitations of the File Selection dialog
for Pocket Excel files are the same as they were for
Pocket Word documents. PrintPocketCE will only
print Pocket Excel files even though Pocket Excel will
load CSV and other delimited text files created by
spreadsheet programs. The "Excel Options" menu
doesn’t offer any additional setup features as the
"Doc Options" menu did. That’s a bit odd,
because as soon as you select a Pocket Excel document
to print, you’ll get the following dialog with
spreadsheet-related printer settings.
PrintPocketCE for Brother — printing
a Pocket Excel document — Spreadsheet settings
Along with selecting the area of the spreadsheet to
print, you also have resize options similar to those
that the Word document printing feature gives you.
Selecting "Normal – 100%" will likely exceed the A7
size paper that the MW-140BT uses. Selecting
"Fit to Page" will reduce what normally appears on an
8.5"x11" sheet of paper to 37% to print it on one
sheet of A7 paper.
Pressing the [Continue] button will display the Printer
Settings dialog shown below. It is identical to
the Printer Settings dialog for Pocket Word printing. The [Quick Print] button assumes all the settings in
the following dialog would be correct and starts
printing.
PrintPocketCE for
Brother — printing a Pocket Excel document — Printer
settings
The "More Settings" screen is identical to the one
shown while printing a Pocket Word document.
When you tap either the [Start Printing] button from
the dialog above or the [Quick Printing] button from
the previous dialog, the document will print and
you’ll return to the document selection screen. The results of printing a Pocket Excel document are
shown below.
An example of
PrintPocketCE’s Pocket Excel printing
(click on the image above for a blown-up version which
better shows the quality of text printing)
Printing e-mail
messages
PrintPocketCE can also print e-mail. When you
select the e-mail icon, you’ll get the following
screen that lets you select which e-mail message you’d
like to print.
PrintPocketCE for
Brother — selecting an e-mail message to print (e-mail folder list drop-down showing)
PrintPocketCE e-mail
printing — Email Options menu
The
"Show" drop-down (top left) will list all the
available e-mail folders to allow you to select the
folder you’d like to print e-mail from. The
order drop-down (top right) allows you to set which
order the e-mail messages are displayed. You can
also click on the "Email Options" menu to switch to
Pocket Word or Pocket Excel printing. (This has
the same effect as clicking on the icons on the menu
bar). "Email Print Options…" gives
you the dialog shown below.
PrintPocketCE for
Brother — Email Print Options
The
Email Print Options dialog allows you to choose how
the e-mail is printed including the order of the
Header elements and the fonts used to print the Header
and body.
You select an e-mail message to print by clicking on it. When you do, you’ll get the familiar Basic Print
Settings dialog shown below.
PrintPocketCE for
Brother — printing e-mail — basic
print settings
This
is the same dialog used in printing Word and Excel documents. The
"More Settings" dialog is the same one shown
previously as well. Tap [Start
Printing] to print your e-mail message. Below,
you’ll see the results of printing an e-mail message.
An example of
PrintPocketCE’s Pocket e-mail printing
(click on the image above for a blown-up version which
better shows the quality of text printing)
The manuals the come
HELP SUPPORT
with the MW140BT are very much on the terse side.
They tell you how to install the software and briefly
how to set up a Bluetooth connection and that’s it. As a partial fix for that, you can use the Brother web
site to get
a list of Frequently Asked Questions (and their
answers),
PDF (Adobe Acrobat) versions of the manuals,
the latest versions of print drivers and software for
your PDA, and
online support.
The software comes with no help files at all. That made
it somewhat difficult to figure out how to use the
MPrint software. PrintPocketCE, however, was
easy enough to use that I probably wouldn’t have
looked at the manual anyway. There’s no help for
either program on the Brother web site as well. However, you can get some pretty decent help for
PrintPocketCE from
the FieldSoftware web site. (That’s the
folks who wrote the program.)
The MW140BT hardware is
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
compatible with USB 1.1 (for laptop or desktop use)
and Bluetooth 1.1 Class 2 (serial port profile).
It requires special thermal paper "cassettes" (size A7
2.9"x4.1") which come in single sheets, three sizes of
cut labels, and 2-ply double copy.
I was a bit concerned when I first looked at the box the
printer came in. The box indicates that the
"Bonus Software" is compatible with Pocket PC and
Pocket PC 2002. Fortunately, Brother keeps the
software updated and it works with Windows Mobile 2003
as well. If I saw this product in a store, I’d
have to check the company web site out first to make sure it
was compatible with WM2003 before I bought it. I
corrective label would eliminate that step.
Brother MPrint printer driver and printing software requires
755KB of Storage Memory for installation and 150KB of
Program Memory to run.
The special version of PrintPocketCE that comes with the
printer requires 120KB of Storage Memory for
installation and 150KB of Program Memory to run.
The
BUGS AND WISHES
MW-140BT hardware performed exactly as specified. There
were no flaws or glitches that occurred during my
testing. The size and weight are about as
perfect as they could be.
The one serious flaw I discovered is with the MPrint
software. It has to be installed into main
memory in order to function properly. As there
is no documentation, there isn’t anywhere to note this
constraint. The installation routine installs
both MPrint and PrintPocketCE in Main Memory
regardless, but even so, MPrint won’t function unless
you selected to install it there.
In a more general sense, Brother could do much better on is
the instructions and documentation. The manual
has a scant four pages on "Printer Operation" which
really only covers installing the software and
connecting to the printer via Bluetooth. It’s a
tribute to the design of the printer that I didn’t run
into any
problems other than the apparently non-functional
program, but the lack of documentation is really
disconcerting. I’d like to see a full set of instructions for
both programs that come with the printer. I’d
also like to see better instructions for loading paper
into the printer. The "instructions" for doing
so are in the form of a diagram on the paper cassette
box. By looking closely at the printer (and
noticing the paper feed mechanism), I was able to
determine how to orient the paper cassette properly,
but it wasn’t obvious by the diagram.
I have one other minor issue with the paper carrier:
There’s a small window on the printer that shows which
type of paper is loaded. That’s a good feature.
What it doesn’t show is whether there’s any paper in
the carrier. If the carrier had a hole beside
the paper type label, you could see into the carrier and
know if it’s empty.
One final issue with the printer is the rechargeable battery.
It’s a Li-ion battery so it doesn’t have "memory"
problems, but, like all Li-ion batteries, it does have
a lifespan of about 3 years. It’s also built
into the printer so you’ll have to send it back to
Brother for a replacement when it does go. If
they made it a user-replaceable battery, it would save
shipping costs for the user.
You can purchase the
PURCHASING
Brother MW-140BT Mobile Printer from the pocketnow
Store for $399.95. You can also purchase the
MW-100 Mobile Printer, which connects via USB or IRDA for $289.95. Both printers come with a cassette
of 50 pages of thermal paper, the AC adapter/charger,
a USB cable, and a CD-ROM containing the printer
driver and MPrint and PrinterPocketCE software. You can order accessories
directly from Brother or from other sources. A package of
A7 thermal paper costs $4.50 or 9 cents per sheet.
PROS
- Small and
light - Quiet
- Designed
for portable use - Good
intuitive design (both hardware and software) - Connects wirelessly via Bluetooth
- Doesn’t
require lining up the ports (like IRDA does) - Very
readable print, even at a small font size - Reasonable battery life
CONS
- Requires
special paper - Can’t
easily tell how much paper you have left - Seriously
incomplete
manuals and documentation - Paper
loading instructions could be more clear - Battery is
not user replaceable
I wasn’t sure that I’d
OVERALL
IMPRESSION
like the MW-140BT when I first saw it, mostly based on
the custom-sized, thermal paper. The serious
lack of documentation didn’t help any. However, the
print readability and durability, and the battery
life eventually won me over. You wouldn’t want to use this
for your primary printer due to the size of the paper.
However, with it’s instant-on functionality,
reasonable paper cost, and highly portable design, the
MW-140BT is an excellent printer for on-the-go
applications. I still can’t quite bring myself to
recommend this printer, only because of the lack of
documentation. If Brother were to fix that, I
would unhesitantly recommend it for users requiring
highly mobile printing.
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