winston19842005 wrote:
On 11/16/07 10:02 PM, in article
zoKdnZbqxvNNxKPanZ2dnUVZ_oWdnZ2d@comcast.com, "Michael J. Mahon"
<mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
N.N. Thayer wrote:
On Nov 15, 12:22 am, rob <r...@spamoff.net> wrote:
On a similar note, a local pharmacy I visited last week was using an
Apple //e to print labels on medicine bottles. I noticed this when I
heard the old C.itoh DMP running in the background. The pharmacist
loves the machine as it's reliable and very cheap to run.
Who says Apple //'s are dead ?
Pictures! :)
There should be a page for sightings of Apple II's still in active use
(outside personal/hobbyist environments). I think the Apple II is
unique in this way; PCs of similar age have usually been supplanted by
their descendants, and I doubt one would find a C64 or TRS-80 being
used in such a fashion.
The reason is that they keep running, unlike virtually all of their
contemporary competitors. They are built like tanks, relatively
speaking, as is the C. Itoh printer mechanism!
This is the opposite of what I hear in the hospital I work in. I'm in
Information Services, and we constantly hear people complaining about
their
old equipment (label printers, dot matrix printers). I try to tell
them that
the old equipment is better than the new. They only believe me once
they get
the new equipment.
People want "shiny new" stuff--that's people and their quest for status.
This desire has nothing to do with utility or reliability.
The new label printers, for instance, have no test mode - you have to
print
live labels from the system - which can be a pain for the IT guy
troubleshooting a printing issue. The old ones have a lot of options
including test labels (which print diagonal lines across the entire
printable area) and even allow you to select the # of labels to print.
The dot matrix printers would not have problems if people would leave the
print-head gap settings alone (there are settings on the print head
and each
side of the bar it rides on - these are old Lexmark printers).
Lexmark is a Johhnie-come-lately. C. Itoh mechanisms (Prowriters,
Apple DMP, early Imagewriters, etc.) were cast metal, and were both
heavy and relatively indestructible. About the only plastic in the
printer was the ribbon cartridge and the case. ;-)
-michael
NadaPong: Network game demo for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."