Brother's New Laser Fax Breaks $300 Price Barrier.

Business Editors & High Tech Writers

PC Expo 2000

Booth No. 2762

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 27, 2000

New IntelliFAX-2600 Laser Fax and MFC-4600 5-in-1 Laser Multi-Function

Center Bring Laser Performance to Virtually Any Small Office or Home

Office

Brother International Corporation, a leading manufacturer of fax, multifunction and printer products, today announces two new laser models: a plain-paper laser fax, IntelliFAX(R)-2600, that creates a new opening price point for its category and a new low priced 5-in-1 Laser Multi-Function Center. The IntelliFAX-2600 is a full-featured laser model that will sell for $299(1), making it the lowest priced laser fax machine on the market, while the MFC-4600 will be the lowest priced laser MFP, selling at a street price of $349.

"The quality and performance of laser based models has long been the preference of most business users, large or small," said Don Cummins, Vice President of Marketing for Fax, Printers, and MFCs at Brother. "A restricted budget may have been the main reason for selecting an alternative technology, but now with the new price points of our new models, they are within the reach of practically any small office or home office."

The arrival of this affordably priced, high quality laser fax from Brother means that SOHO business owners and even lower volume customers can benefit from the professional document output that is associated with laser products, plus the added benefit of a lower cost per page versus ink jet devices. The IntelliFAX-2600 will begin shipping in August while the MFC-4600 will begin shipping in September.

IntelliFAX-2600: A Laser Fax at an Ink Jet Price

The IntelliFAX-2600 delivers a full range of features in a design that is both physically and economically compact. It produces sharp text and clean graphics using a 64 shade gray scale, "smoothing," and enhanced image resolution. Plus a 14.4K bps high-speed modem and generous 2 MB dual access memory allow it to store up to 130 pages(2) for out-of-paper reception or to Quick Scan faxes for memory transmission while the unit is sending or receiving.

A number of other key functions are also featured on the IntelliFAX-2600. They include fax forwarding, paging, remote retrieval, 56 auto dial locations and broadcasting to up to 96 locations. This model is Call Waiting/Caller ID and Distinctive Ring Detection ready for users subscribing to these local phone company services. Multi-copy with sort functions as well as copy enlargement (up to 200%) and copy reduction (to 50%) are also supported.

Another advantage that laser technology has over ink jet is the low operating cost-per-page. The IntelliFAX-2600 further extends this economy with the use of dual consumables, that typically deliver a low cost per page. A 20 page automatic document feeder and large capacity 200 sheet paper cassette are conveniently built into the unit's space-saving frame, enhancing user productivity and adding to its ease of use.

MFC-4600: New 5-in-1 Laser Multi-Function Center

Extending its leadership in the laser Multi-Function category, Brother is also introducing the MFC-4600. Operating conveniently as a fax, laser printer, copier, scanner and PC Fax, the MFC-4600 delivers outstanding text and images at a high-quality 600 x 600 dpi. As a laser fax, it shares the same functions as the IntelliFAX-2600, but with 48 auto dial locations.

The MFC-4600 is a high quality 600 x 600 dpi laser printer that prints up to 6 pages per minute, and works with Windows 3.1x, 95, 98, 2000, ME or NT Workstation 4.0, as well as PCL4 emulation. The parallel printer cable is included in the box for quick user set-up.

Other features that make this unit very attractive to users, including a 600 x 600 dpi scanner (interpolated) with a dedicated one-touch button for scanning directly to e-mail, OCR or image applications. Also, the award winning ScanSoft(TM) PaperPort(R), TextBridge(R) OCR and PC Fax Software from Smith Micro are bundled with the product. This strong combination of features is a great value at $349(1).

ABOUT BROTHER INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION

Bridgewater, New Jersey is the corporate headquarters for Brother in the Americas, from Canada to South America. It has fully integrated sales, marketing services, manufacturing, research and development capabilities located in the U.S. In addition to its headquarters in Bridgewater, New Jersey, Brother has branches in California, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Texas, as well as subsidiaries in Ohio, Canada, Brazil, Chile and Mexico.

Additional information may be obtained from the Brother fax-back system toll-free at 800/521-2846 or by visiting their web site at www.brother.com.

(1) Estimated Street Price

(2) Using Brother chart No. 1 with MMR coding and standard resolution