Labels

Many years ago I used to label stuff with one of those old Dymo machines. About 15 years ago I upgraded to a Brother Laminated labeller. It cost about £20 at the time and has been useful in the workshop and for things like plant tags etc in the garden. They aren’t exactly user friendly though if you want to include symbols etc. I’ve therefore recently upgraded to one of these and hooked up to a computer it’s so much easier to use. As well as hundreds of included symbols you can use your own images and print using any Font you happen to have on your machine. At the last count I had over 600 Fonts to choose from. If you like to keep stuff neatly labelled check out the specs. List price is nearly a hundred quid but I paid a little over £60. It takes all size tapes up to 24mm. A white 24mm is included with the machine. Oh, and it can generate and print QR codes if you have the use.

I've got the earlier Brother Pt-PC printer but have to use it with a no longer used laptop with XP on it. I can run the software on later machines but it needs a serial port and trying to get a serial port to work via USB will cause hair loss. When the tape cartridges are used up it will become WEEE.

Martin C

I had a dymo label printer which was very good, when it finally bit the dust I bought what appeared to be an almost identical model from Lidl. Beware; the newer models are no longer transfer printers but thermal, so you can no longer get white on black writing (which as I was doing an instrument panel was what I required), only black text on various colours. And if you use it on anything that gets warm the label goes black!

There are a huge range of tapes available for these. My wife have even bought some Gold on Red ribbon.

I would like one of those, I have a hand held Brother label printer, but the USB PC connected type looks much better.

Brother sell several similar type’s including wireless ones but I’m very pleased with the PT-P700.

I have a Brother P-touch E100, a self contained device rather than needing a PC. Makes a nice label, plenty of options available. I'm not sure that the labels it makes will have the long term durability of the traditional Dymo type.

My only complaint is its appetite for batteries, a mains adaptor sorted that out.