You would never want your point of sale system to be down because you ran out of paper. Receipt and remote printers are the parts of your point of sale system most prone to failure. The same is true with regard to not have a supply of ribbons to use when your existing ribbon gets too light to read. This is also true for printers. Receipt printers come in a wide variety of interfaces, but parallel interfaces are a great choice for receipt printers. If you own a printer that takes ink cartridges, you’re probably not aware of some the problems, profits and legalities that surround these essential items.
What this means for you is less cost of repairs but a longer down time. Which is similar to laser printers most of the time. Virtually every major printer manufacturer has been involved in lawsuits regarding the sale and use of re-manufactured inkjet or laser printer ink cartridges. They did so because of the superior speed and reliability of the parallel interface compared to the then standard serial connection.
Even in the best of situations you should expect to have hours of downtime if a replacement printer is needed. In 2005, Lexmark won a suit that gives the company the authority under patent and contract law to enforce the “single use only” policy that’s written on the boxes in which their cartridges are packaged. Another reason that parallel cables are not good for long runs is the thickness of the cable and the cost.
In most cases you can exchange a dot matrix printer for a thermal printer without any difficulties. Tonik has been selling inkjet cartridges and toner cartridges since 2001. Usually this is the exact opposite of cheap printers for sale. It is the unique and easy locking parallel cable connector that makes a parallel receipt printer the perfect choice.
In the time it takes to call your service provider you could have already exchanged the broken printer and be back up servicing your customers. By utilizing an otherwise ignored communication interface, freeing up other interfaces to be used for other devices and by having a locking connector parallel receipt printers are truly the perfect receipt printer for point of sale systems. You are not as stressed by having your point of sale system be crippled by a down printer.