OKI Microline 380

The OKI 380 is a dot-matrix 24 pin monochrome printer.

We make use of a number of these printers at the company I work for. They will retail for around the £250-£300 mark, depending on the supplier you use.

Dot-matrix printers have been around for many years and this type of printer was really the first kind that most people would have seen in offices, appearing along side the early desktop computers. However, technology quickly moves on and these printers were superseded by the invention of the laser printer. These days it is rare to see this type of printer in a normal office environment as the laser printer is a much more flexible machine.

However, the technology although old still has its uses. The reason why dot-matrix printers have not yet gone the way of the Dodo is because for certain uses they have one distinct advantage over a laser printer. What is this advantage then, I hear you cry?

Well, a dot-matrix printer is really the only type of printer you can use if you want to print on 2 part print media. By this I mean something like a financial statement where the statement is printed on a page made from two layers, the top copy is kept by the company and the other is sent to the customer. This sort of media relies on carbon to produce the second copy and so needs a printer that impresses ink on the paper by force. As the dot-matrix printer works like a type writer and relies on force to impress the ink onto paper, this is the best type of printer to use. A laser printer will not do this as it does not forcibly impress the ink onto the paper, rather it burns it on by use of the laser technology.

I hope that made sense? Anyway as our company needs to produce statements on 2 part paper, we still have dot-matrix printers in everyday use.

In Use
The controls for this OKI printer are set out on a front panel. There are no display panels on this printer; it relies on old fashioned touch sensitive buttons. There are various options available from these buttons, such as changing font size, character pitch and print quality. For most users though the Online and Print buttons are the ones that will get the most use!

This dot-matrix printer can produce a fairly quick printing speed, although it can’t compare to the speed of a laser printer as it is still reliant on technology similar to that of a typewriter!

The response time for print requests is pretty quick. This is due to the fact that the printer can only deal with text only requests, so there are no large graphics for the printer’s processor to have to deal with.

One major disadvantage with the dot-matrix printer is the time it takes to change paper over. With a laser printer it is just a case of opening up the paper tray and then dropping another pile of paper in, but unfortunately with the dot-matrix printer there is a slightly more involved process! The printer paper is fed from underneath the printer, through a series of rollers and then through to the top of the printer. The paper then needs to be lined up so it is in the correct place on the page for the print job to begin. This can take a while to do all of this, although you do get quicker with more practice!

Another time consuming procedure is swapping over the print ribbons. The ribbon itself needs to be threaded through two spindles on the print head, so it runs freely through the print head as the printer works. This can be a bit of a tricky process to begin with, but after a few times you can become a bit of a dab hand at it. After all this, it certainly makes you appreciate how easy it is to change toner cartridges in modern laser and desk jet printers!

These OKI printers are very reliable. We have a number of these machines that have been running quite happily for the last 5 or 6 years without any problems. This may be due to the more simple technology they use, but must also be down to decent build quality.

Conclusion
This dot-matrix printer is a reliable machine. The features are not particularly comprehensive, but it does what is required of it in a trouble free and reliable manner. The only disadvantages with this type of printer are the difficulty of changing the paper and printer ribbons.

For a specific type of job such as printing on two layered paper, I would recommend this printer; but I could not see it being of use for normal office applications as the modern laser printers provide a much superior performance.

Thanks for reading!