Should I buy A Dot Matrix Printer?

[TheDutyPaid]

As a lover of old tech, I found myself thinking about the old dot matrix printer today and after watching a video on YouTube of one print, it got me thinking about buying one as a toy and a bit of fun.

A look on ebay I found many old units for sale but, then I remembered about needing to hook it up via a parallel port or serial port. I don't need to even look to know my machine does not have them. also the driver side is a big stop.

But then just doing a Google search I found EPSON still does quite a range of new machines and with the Epson LQ-350 at £170 (lowest price I found) is quite a good deal and works over USB. Also a new ribbon for this is just £6

My brother laser printer I use at the moment to do my ebay invoicing, address labels ect cost me £60 but I have not even dared to look at replacement toner cost.

I know print speed is not very fast and will look a bit, well dotty. But as my main business is selling refurbished typewriters I think it would be OK with my first two points.

Has anyone got a new dot matrix or even a old one still dotting away?

[Flibb]

Bloody awful things, one of the few bits of kit I would gladly never touch again, as to paying for a new one not a chance in hell. The last one I had to use lived in a sound isolation cabinet because the noise it made drover everybody in the office mad. The ribbons look cheap, but a mono laser will be cheaper to run over time, especially when you take in to account ear defender ware and tare.

[peterb]

Depends what you want it for. Ink jets can give near photo quality image prints, but while the initial cost is fairly low, they are expensive in consumables and relatively slow.

Laser printers are coming down in price, are generally cheaper to run and faster than inkjets.

[Flibb]

My particular hate of dot matrix stems from using a commodore 64 for word processing while at uni, must be over 20 years ago now. Hitting print on an assignment at 3AM would result in not getting any sleep, and having extremely annoyed neighbours the next morning.

[Jonj1611]

Indeed, for the people that remember them, the noise is foremost. I had an LX-80 with tractor feed, but that wasn't as noisy as the school's FX-80

[Bluecube]

I reckon the OP has the rose tinted specs on... Massive, noisy, poor quality output. There was little to like about dot matrix printers. They were good for their time but it was a fireworks and champagne moment when inkjets took over from them.

[peterb]

Dot matrix/impact printers are useful if you are using multipart stationary with a tractor feed. Multipart can be carbon interleaved or usually carbon less.

I must admit to mis-reading the OP, and assumed it was about ink jets vs laser.

I still have an MX80 somewhere. Most operating systems have the drivers embedded for basic printing, the language was universal. Printing graphics might be an issue.

They were quite good with DOS based machines as you could embed printing codes in the text to give rudimentary formatting.

If you want to go retro with it, set up a DOS partition and go back to CLI. I might have a 3.5 inch floppy disk set for WordPerfext 5.1 somewhere.....

[abaxas]

Perfect for dusty environments as the mechanics are ultra simple. Also very very cheap to run.

You'll still see loads in use at garages, builders merchants, etc.

[virtuo]

For the line of work you are in I think it'd be a nice touch to type out your invoices on the typewriter you are selling.

[shaithis]

Printing invoices is one of the last jobs that a dot matrix can do.....although £170 seems a bit rough!

As others has eluded to, you would probably need your invoices to be tractor-fed for it to work well though, I have vague memories of trying to get a single sheet of paper to be strait in a dot matrix...

If you were printing a few invoices a day and it was all setup for a quick click and the invoice is printed and ready for you to tear off along the perforated edge, then it could well be worth it. I notice that most garages and online stores are still printing invoices that way.

[matematika]

I believe if you chance upon a good laser deal you should go for it. Matrix ones are pretty awful in my experience.