Gridlock Mikey

So here is the situation,

Customer calls up and asks if I can supply a printer HP5100TN to be precise. Tells me that she's been quoted about £1350.
I look into Ricoh's huge Printer range and find a colour machine that is capable of doing everything better than the HP, colour AND it is cheaper.

Sofar, nothing unusual in that

After a few conversations back and forth, she finds out from her I.T people (Third Party down south) that the machine needs to support the following:


PCL 4,5 & 6 (What about 5e?? )
Have USB2 connectivity

Both of these are no problem,

She then says that the machine needs to support Bar Code fonts. OK, the machine does, but she then mentioned that her 3rd party IT people were going to charge her for this facility??

The machine that they are replacing currently produces bar codes so that would indicate that all software etc required to perform this task is already in place. The Ricoh machine is a plug and play Item so I don't quite get what the 3rd party are going to charge for?

Are bar codes some kind of mystery then? Why cant a printer just print a bunch of lines and what's with the charging issue?

TonyFlow

It may be that the barcode is called by a font, and the fonts are held on a memory module, this way, extra programming is not needed to control barcodes?

Gridlock Mikey

So does that mean that the 3rd party are having a laugh then?

I reckon it's just a bit of I.T Scaremongering so that they go and buy from them!!
I'm all for a bit of competition, but blatantly lying to get business is just wrong!

stevencotton

Sounds entirely wrong to me, barcodes are as you say just lines, the width determining the bit pattern. Machines don't even read the actual font in use underneath, that's for people to key the number in if the scanner can't read the barcode.

TonyFlow

What I am saying is you can buy fontpacks for laser printers which as bar-codes, so the print command says use installed font(code 39 barcode e.g.), and the print line is then 12345678, this will then print a barcode with the information 12345678 held in the barcode, the graphic is not generated on the machine, it is a stored font on the printer!
Just done a quick search, http://support.ricoh.com/connectivit..._pack/info.htm
looks like you can get barcode DIMMS from Ricoh!

What I am saying is that the program they print from may call the fonts held on a DIMM (and not generate them as a graphic), in which case, you would need the fonts installed on the printer.

stevencotton

That makes sense, seems a weird product though. It'll be faster and use less memory to do it that way, all the processing is at the printer end. If they'll be installing those modules, that'll be why they're charging.

Leg@cy

iTrader: (2)

not sure if this helps,

but to be able to print/use a BARcode for your own use, you first have to purchase that 13 digit code.

Is this what she means ??