Receipt printers

ff485

Grumbler
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Feb 12, 2005
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Manchester, NH
My apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere but a search did not yield any relevant hits.

We are considering purchasing a receipt printer and we have several questions.

Our POS vendor suggests a Star TSP600 thermal printer.

Do you use a receipt printer? Which one?

Do you have any comments regarding thermal versus dot matrix or auto-cutter versus no auto-cutter?

We do not need any cash drawer interface capabilities.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give us.

Mark
 
We're using Spec Soft and have the TSP600 (autocut). Great printer but Spec Soft doesn't support the autocut feature (yet?) No big deal, we just tear it off just as you would with the manual cutter.
Occasionally the printer just quits printing and we have to restart but I'm not sure its the printer's problem...more of a driver or Windows issue.
If you're going to share the printer on 2 stations, you'll have to use a printer switch. We're using the auto switch and it's been great.
I'd sure go with a thermal printer. They're very fast, quiet and you can buy the paper at Costco! Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions. We've had the printer for just short of a year.
 
We have Lifesaver and have the Star 700 series auto cut off. LS does support the auto cutoff feature now. It is amazing how fast...maybe a second...that it prints out. We have a ton of gift items so the receipt printer is wonderful for us.No more waiting 30 seconds or so for the laser printer to print the customer receipt......
thumbsup.gif
 
We have the Star 700 series also (TSP743 with auto cutter and USB interface). It works very well with the POS and is the big brother of the TSP 600 (700 is commercial grade, high speed thermal, drop in paper loading). We bought it from posworld.com Support for the TSP700 and auto cutter was added with the most recent version of LifeSaver.

I suggest thermal instead of Dot Matrix. (faster, quieter, cheaper to operate) There's no more waiting for the laser to warm up, for final payments/pick ups, quicksales, or sales. The back room workorder copy still goes to the laser.

PS: If you want to network it with 2 or more pc's, you don't need a switch. Just right click on it in Windows and select SHARE. Then the other pc's can add it as a network printer, and they'll be able to print to it. This trick works with almost any printer, as long as the pc's are networked with the same router/switch/hub.

Mike

PS: This thread was moved from the main forum

[ 02-27-2006, 03:19 PM: Message edited by: Mike Labbe @ GTP ]
 
Epson TMT-88's if they're still current...? I have bought and recommended hundreds of them and not one has ever had a fault to the best of my knowledge (touch wood).
 
The 88's were (and are) still very popular. The current replacement is a TM-T88III.

I used to service POS systems for a chain of restaurants, and they used 88's for the wait staff and Star's for the kitchen/bar printers that had more abuse. The 88 takes paper that is slightly smaller (2.8" wide instead of 3.1"), goes at 150mm/second, and has a slightly lower resolution of 180 dpi(vs 203 dpi). Most POS systems probably support these as well, but like always - check with your vendor first. Street price on the 88 with USB and auto cutter is $321. (within $8 of the 700 series)
 
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