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This is one of the smallest All In Ones around, it is 36x25x12cm and is also light enough for a child to move with ease.

There are a total of 15 buttons on the right side of the face of the unit, to the left of this is 5x1.5cm LED display. On removal from the box you first need to remove a good amount of tape and then install the four ink cartridges, now answer a few simple questions posed by the LED display and you have a perfectly acceptable - if a little slow - copy machine. Some size adjustment - reduction/enlargement - is possible but don't bank on much more than one A4 copy a minute in colour, okay for someone who just needs an occasional copy. In black maybe two A4 copies are possible.

See also: Multifunction printers

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Now to use the printing or scanning capabilities you need to install software on the PC. Insert the CD and follow the prompts a few minutes later you will be 300MB of hard disc space down and will have a printer driver and some Paper Port software installed. Here I have a slight moan, I own a later copy of Paper Port and had to uninstall this as the Brother installer just said later software installed - exit - and as the driver software is linked in the main installation it will not continue.

Scanning quality was excellent and providing you give it something reasonable to scan you will get good results. Should you insert the translation software CD you can use around 800MB of hard disc space on some rather clever software. This works by scanning a page in a choice of several languages and then translating (in an IE type window) to an even larger number of languages so the scanner has to be of good quality as if you gave it a letter in certain continental languages that use various E.h^?O"? type characters it needs to be better than just reading those used in English.

For basic printing it is okay - but nowhere near the claimed speed - the output in it's draft mode called 'fast mode' was readable but rather grey. Printing the nonsensical 200 word document produced 12PPM. Printing a more normal 1500 word document spread over four pages came in at 9PPM. However if I printed at the next standard up 'fast normal' the same document printed at 5.5PPM, this was just slightly grey.

The real problem is with photo printing - not with quality that's fine - but with speed, now I do not care much about speed with photo printing, some recent printers and all in ones can produce an A4 borderless page in less than three minutes, others take longer and providing the output is good I am not concerned but twenty four minutes and twenty seconds that's 24minutes 20seconds in case you think your eyes deceive for an A4 borderless print - good as it is - is far to long. Admittedly you are warned by a pop up box when you select borderless that it will take a long time but that is far to long. Should you print a standard A4 page of either a single print or four 9x13 prints these take around 11 or 12 minutes. That figure is still rather long but as the border around the image is only around 1.5cm why the huge difference.

This is printing in the mid mode 'photo', it will not allow borderless in 'best' mode. I have spoken at length with Brother and they do not think there is a problem with my test machine. I asked for the reason and was told it takes a long time.

This could have been an ideal All In One device, it is very small and at the less than £100 price from the link below is good value, however should you need to print more than the very occasional photo image I would look elsewhere. Available from the link below at £97.90 including delivery.

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/164111/art/brother/dcp-aa5cn-multifunction.html?srcid=3351

http://www.brother.co.uk/g3.cfm/s_page/50670/s_level/16990/s_product/DCP315CNU1