Otherwise, if you are printing a lot, they will drive you crazy.
We find it best to keep them in a seperate room - away from desks or phones. The only downside to these units, apart from the print quality (relative to laser printers) is they are loud. We have yet to have the print head itself fail. The failure usually is electronic, or in the carriage. We have had a couple die on us, but we have always gotten our money out of them first (and then some). If and when the unit dies, you can buy another cheaper than you can f ix it. The units are workhorses, so if you can find a clean looking used or refurb on ebay, don't be surprised if it has a lot of life in in for $100 or less. New units like this price out at around $400-$500. Once installed, you only need to change the ribbons periodically. We use ours all day for sales orders/ packing list and invoices.
The look of the dot matrix image is not as crisp as laser printers but if you are using multi-part forms, this is the printer to get. What can I say - these units are tanks, and are ideal for printing on multi-part forms (we have used on up to 5 part carbonless forms with no problems). This is probably the 4th or 5th Oki 320 Turbo we have purchased - all either used or refurbished on ebay. Solid, durable unit for those with dot matrix needs All features work and are easily set in software. (Certainly NOT letter quality, but do not need that). Printer works exceptionally well as a multi-part-form(s) printer an option that I am currently using for order-processing. But after putting in a fresh ribbon and getting it all working w/ OSX 10.4, I am quite satisfied. I had forgotten just how NOISY a dot-matrix machine can be. Page-top sensing and move-up for tear-off works very well. After loading driver, printer works very well.
Tried Oki 320 printer w/ older Mac Powerbook (OSX, 10.4+). When hooked up, the system STILL does not work correctly. Configured as per Apple instructions, and found the driver in the printer-drivers list. The Unix system generic printer driver does not work.
Tried for three days to configure Apple Macintosh Macbook PRO (w/ OSX 10.6+). Operating :Approx.Bought Okidata Microline 320 Turbo to provide a printer for printing 3X5 and 4X6 cards for vehicle check-lists.
Manual (Top), Tractor feeder (Rear), Tractor feeder (Bottom), Cut sheet feeder (Rear) Ribbon cartridge, Power cable, CD-ROM, Others W (ISO10561 (Utility, Range1) Printing Approx. High Speed Draft, Utility, NLQ Courier, NLQ Gothic, Scalable Courier, Scalable Gothic, OCR-Bīold, Double Width, Double Height, Emphasized, Italics, Over score, Underline
Windows 7, Windows 7 圆4, Windows Vista, Windows Vista 圆4, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 圆4, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 圆4 OKI Microline, ESC/P emulation, IBM ProPrinter emulation
Manual (Top), Tractor feeder (Rear), Tractor feeder (Bottom), Cut sheet feeder (Rear), Roll paper stand Bidirectional/Unidirectional printing, Short line-seeking printing