Friday, June 27, 2008

Thermal Printers


Thermal Bluetooth receipt printers have become the standard offering on the majority of point of sale systems today. Especially in the restaurant industry it is hard to find a point of sale system that does not have a thermal receipt printer. For the most part thermal receipt printers cost more. Here are 5 reasons why a thermal receipt printer is superior to a dot matrix receipt printer.

1. Speed
The average Dot matrix printer will print around 3 lines per second while Thermal printers average in excess of 20 lines per second.

2. Print Quality
Thermal receipt printers have a much better image and prints sharp quality text and especially when printing logos. Just go and line up at any POS Malaysia offices and get a sample queue receipt.


3. Connectivity
Thermal receipt printers have this options to communicate wireless with PDA through Bluetooth or WiFi. This makes it very convenient as no more messy wires dangling everywhere.

4. Reliability
MTBF stands for Mean Time Between Failure. This is the standard for measuring the average time between failure for any device. In the case of printers it is either the average number of lines printed before a failure occurs or the average feet of paper that can be printed before a failure occurs. In either case, the thermal receipt printers win across the board. There are some thermal receipt printers that are better than others, but dot matrix printers simply do not have the staying power of a thermal printer. This is due to fewer moving parts on a thermal printer and the fact that dot heads break due to the dot pins snagging on ribbons or are damaged when coins are dropped into the printer mechanism.


5. Cost of Ownership
This goes beyond simply the cost of supplies. This analysis should also include downtime and the cost of repairs. Thermal paper does cost more than dot matrix paper. However, the added cost of ribbons for the dot matrix printer sends the cost of ownership for supplies higher for the dot matrix receipt printer. When you add in the cost of repairs and the more frequent repairs for the dot matrix receipt printers the cost of ownership clearly swings in favor of thermal receipt printers.

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