Okidata Microline 321 – The Duracell of Dot Matrix Printers

I am very familiar with this printer. This is the receipt printer of choice at our credit union and at many other businesses in the area. We have 15 of these printers spread out between our two branches so I have a fairly good idea of what they are capable of. We not only use these on our current system but they were the receipt printers of choice on the previous system as well.

Functionality
These printers have a long-standing history of reliability at our institution. The old system relied on two copy receipts, therefore a dot matrix or impact printer was required. The fact that an impact is used to produce each character on the page has both advantages and disadvantages. The impact allows you to print multiple copies when using the appropriate paper. On the other hand it does not produce as sharp of results as an inkjet or laser printer. Depending on your needs, the impact printer may prove better. In our situation it did.

An additional advantage of the dot matrix printer over the laser or inkjet is that it can be set to produce a half-sheet receipt. This can save a lot of paper when you are producing some 40,000 receipts a month. This fact prompted us to stay with the impact printers when we went to the new system. It produces a legible receipt while saving the company a great deal of money on paper, printers and toner.

As with all dot matrix printers, the very nature of the process precludes a very fine image. Your characters are made up of tiny dots. This loss in character quality can be significant compared to your average laser printer. If you are trying to print graphics, stay away from this printer. You must weigh the loss of quality against your needs in determining if this is the right printer for you.

Features
This is a pretty standard 9-pin dot matrix printer. It has seven menu buttons across the front plus a pad for print quality and a pad for font size. This allows for a full spectrum of settings to enable the user to tailor the printer to their particular needs. Okidata’s key selling point on this product is the fact that it can handle paper stock twice as thick as the competition. This enables you to print through more layers or on thicker paper. It is capable of printing through six copies at one time with the correct paper.

One of the key features of this printer, and the one that makes it so long lasting and reliable, is the drive system. Rather than your cable or belt style drive system, the Microline uses a rack and pinion system. This extends its useful life several-fold over the competition’s.

Price
The suggested retail price for these printers is $376.99. In my experience, this is pretty close to what you will find it for. There does not seem to be a lot of mark-up or volume discounts on this product. One place where the user will see definite savings, is in the operating cost. The ribbon on these printers last quite some time, at least a few months and is just about $7.50 to replace. Compare that to the $30.00 for a new inkjet cartridge or the $70 or more for a new laser toner. This saving is in addition to the reduced paper waste on smaller forms.

You have to be very careful when shopping for ribbons for this printer. We purchase in bulk and the last purchase we made we only paid $3.02 a piece for the ribbons. Doing a little looking at the local stores and on-line stores, I have seen a wide range in price. Most of them were at least $6.00 each. The Oki website itself lists them for $8.99 each. With a little judicious shopping you should be able to find them for somewhere in the $7.50 range.

A rough estimate of our savings can be calculated in the difference in paper used. If we were to use a laser printer for the same documents we would use an additional 480 reams of paper a year! For those of you in a business that buys in bulk that’s still an additional 24 cases of paper in savings. Now add in the cost difference between a toner cartridge that is only good for about 10,000 pages and see how many of those we would use in a year. We would be using approximately 48 extra toner cartridges a year. Needless to say when all of this is taken into consideration, the Microline is definitely the way to go.

But Wait! There’s More!

Reliability
I know you were wondering about that title. These printers are extremely sturdy. Okidata gives them a projected life of approximately 200 Million characters. These printers far exceed that on a regular basis. The line was first introduced in 1988 and has gone through a couple of minor upgrades. We have several of these printers that were purchased as early as 1989 and they have a very low failure rate. I have had only one failure in the last three years.

One caveat is that they produce prodigious amounts of paper dust. I think it is more a function of the type of paper they use but it collects in the printer. To help the printer last longer you should clean it out on a regular basis (quarterly works fine for us). With just this one precaution you can have a printer that keeps going and going and going. (Come on you knew that was coming sooner or later!)

The Bottom Line
The bottom line is just that, the bottom-line. If you need a printer with the capabilities and functionality that the Microline has, it will have a positive impact on your bottom line. While it may not win any awards for the finest print quality, it will win for efficiency! At a little under $400 it provides a lot of usefulness. I would definitely recommend this product to anyone who has the need for a printer of this nature.