★ APPLICATIONS ★ PAO/PRESSE ★ LABEL PRINTER|8000PLUS) ★ |
| Label Printer | Applications Pao/presse |
Label Printer looks very different. It is controlled by a series of menus which makes it much easier to fly when just starting out but may prove irritating in the long run. However in practice the two have a tremendous amount of similarities. The most unwelcome similarity is that Label Printer again needs to dedicate a disc to store its own specially formatted data file. No data import or output options exist. The options available for editing your labels, and inserting fancy features, are less comprehensive than with Easy Labeller. You can mix type styles, add serial numbers and serial letters, delete left and right and clear all text, insert characters, and switch upper and lower case. Newly typed labels can be directly printed out by specifying the number of copies you want, and the label size. Up to two labels across the web are allowed. When taking data from a stored file you can optionally specify the data drive, and also can inspect each label in turn and choose whether or not to skip it. When adding a label to a stored file there is a greater restriction over the label size, and no underlining is allowed. However, you can store three reminder lines of information about each label that is not printed, but does get included in any text search, and can put them into named categories, a better system than that of Easy Labeller, All stored labels can be listed, selected by its number in the file, selected by a search of the data or a selected by category. You do have the option for changing the label size at printing so that the restrictions on label size seem only to be related to the way the data is stored on disc. Finally as soon as you leave Label Printer, it calls up Disckit, if you have it on your working disc, which is a very nice touch to encourage people to keep making backups of their data. Verdict In truth there is relatively little to choose between the two programs, and there is no suggestion that either of them is a 'bad buy'. They are both fairly priced as there is no escaping that Easy Labeller by MASS is the more powerful program of the two. However for most people, Label Printer will do a more than adequate job, and seems to be the most fluent to use. It is probable that this impression is due entirely to the more cumbersome data entry procedure of Easy Labeller and that, once the name and address file has been largely finalised, it will be the better tool. Easy Labeller is the best choice if your are using unusual stationery. One of the greatest differences between them is the style of presentation. Both companies claim that theirs is more sensible, and at the end of the day you might as well go for the one that suits your preference. Ultimately however they share a deep flaw, namely the problem of data file handling. They need to have data merge, data export and in particular data import options to be really useful, and certainly these wilt have to be added before they stand a chance of selling to anyone who has already invested time and effort in typing names and addresses into an existing system. The first company to solve this deserves to clean up,
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