[Nhcoll-l] HONEYWELL, PX940 PRINTER, VERIFIER W/PERPETUAL LIC.

[Douglas Yanega]

A model no one has mentioned (perhaps very few institutions use one 
aside from us and the AMNH) is the SATO M-84Pro.

This machine is very old, very clunky, requires very old software to run 
(we have a dedicated Windows 2000 machine, without which we can't 
interface with it), and is astonishingly slow. We use it to print 
barcode labels for specimens, and it prints 13 labels in a row each 
iteration. Each iteration takes ~100 seconds. That's something like 7 or 
8 labels a minute, and we often print thousands of labels in one job, so 
it sometimes prints all day long to finish a job. It uses datamax 
rolls/ribbons ("Datamax 4x500 poly tag continuous"), which we have been 
sourcing from Alpha Systems (alphasystemsva.com).

The plus side is that it is *very* low-tech, and rarely has need of any 
form of maintenance. It's nearly 20 years old, and the few problems 
we've had with it were all something we were able to fix ourselves.

I keep expecting it to die, and I do read threads here regarding other 
printers, planning for the eventuality of replacing it, but it hasn't 
happened yet. Perhaps the one thing I'd be curious about is whether 
there are other places besides Alpha Systems where folks have found the 
pricing significantly better for the same printing supplies, since it 
looks like our printer uses the same rolls and ribbons that many others 
are using. It's been a long time since we've needed to re-order, but 
it's in the foreseeable future.

Peace,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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