Jan/Feb 2005

Two new battery-operated portable thermal printers from the Extech stable have been launched in the UK by Maxatec Europe. The S4500/S4000 both print on paper rolls 112mm (4.25in) wide. The company says it has recognised a demand for this slightly wider style of portable printer, which offers more scope for display variety than the more typical 3in wide versions.

The new models have an 80-column default font, leaving space for text, logos, descriptions of goods and so on. Yet the printer itself weights only 850g including paper and battery.

The S4500/S4000 printers use a new 32-bit Arm 7 micro-controller from ST Micro. This is a flash-based, integrated CPU that contains firmware, resident fonts, rotated fonts, downloadable fonts, forms, graphics, logos and barcodes. It also incorporates both FLASH and SRAM memory and provides for improved performance.

The printers include 1.2MB of SRAM and 2MB of flash memory. A new high-speed communication system allows for serial, IrDA (infra-red), Bluetooth and 802.11b communication at 115K. Other options include a three-track magnetic card reader and/or smartcard reader.

The units are MS-DOS- and Windows-compatible, and printer drivers are available for Windows 95, 98, 2000 and XP. Print utilities are also available for Windows CE, Pocket PC, and .NET, plus Palm-based operating systems.