Same thing here on a Brother printer starter cartridge. Surprisingly quick low toner warning. Took cartridge out, shook it like mad in XYZ directions, put it back in, finished the job and it even went on for a couple of more days. Meantime, I bought two medium (not giant) cartridges, so I'm Boy Scouted for when the first new one craps out. Yay, me !
That shaking up in XYZ dimensions works for liquid ink cartridges in jet printers too, by the way.
My biggest bitches about Brother is their drivers seem to be flaky. Both on my Dell, with XP and my HP G-72 with Win 7, it is difficult to reboot with the printer connected, and they keep "refreshing" my desktop icons on the HP and sticking the new "updated" ones up in the upper left hand corner of my desktop. (The Dell is not connected to the 'net in any way shape or form.)
I often say the measure of a man is the size of the things that annoy him, but I must be a small man because that ticks me off.
Otherwise, the printer works fine. So far. I have an A-B switch to connect printer, mouse, and keyboard from one machine to the other with the push of a button.
Oh, and I
try to make it a rule to never take the first item on the shelf, but get the one behind it. I sometimes forget, and I sometimes get burned by doing that anyhow. I hate that damned restocking of returned items --either repackaged by a customer or by store staff in the back rooms. With that process, sooner or later everything on the shelf will have been restocked.
Terry