( 6 reviews )
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Posted: Mar 17 2009
I received my Brother PT-9500PC Label Printer just over a week ago. Setup was very easy on my Macintosh. Rather than using the software on the provided disk, I downloaded the latest software and drivers from the Brother website and was up and running in minutes. I did have problems getting it to work when attached to a USB hub, but that could have been a problem with the hub rather than the printer. Once I plugged it directly into the computer, all was well. Full version info, for those interested: * Mac OS X 10.5.6 (Build 9G55) * P-touch Editor 5.0 (Version 5.0.017) * PT-9500PC Driver (Version 2.0.1) The print quality of the labels is excellent. This is a 360 DPI printer, so it has a resolution similar to the early laser printers. Curves and edges appear rounded and smooth. You can see the pixels if you look really close, but print quality looks fine for most purposes. This means that you can use interesting fonts, including fonts with fairly thin lines if you want. Print speed is very good, and the printer can cut the tape completely between each label, or just score the label and leave the backing paper connected - this makes it easy to peel off the next sticker when printing a string of labels. The software is much better than I was expecting - labeling software is often fairly lame. P-touch Editor 5.0 is a well put-together and professional looking software package. I haven't yet used all the features, such as auto-increment and bar-codes, but just from experimentation, those features appear to be easy to get to and use. One random note, though: I haven't found a way to rotate text to arbitrary angles (I was trying to place text diagonally). I assume I could do this in another software package and just import it as a picture, but I haven't tried. The only reason I gave the product 4 stars instead of 5: The maximum print width is 27.1mm (just over 1"). This means that on the 1.5" labels, you get about 0.2" margins at the edges of the tape whether you want them or not. With smaller tape sizes, you can print to within 0.04" of the edge. This may or may not be an issue for you, but it is a fact that is buried in the tech specs. While it is true that it can print on all the listed tape sizes up to 1.5", it can't print near the edges of the 1.5" tape like it can on the narrower tapes. All in all, I'm very happy with this product and I expect it to provide a long useful life just like my hand-held Brother P-touch labeler.
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Posted: Jan 12 2009
I have had this printer for over 5 years. I love it. It is really high quality and I haven't had any problems with it. It makes a high quality label that looks profession. I would totally recommend this printer to anyone who has a small business, because you can cut your printing costs down, because you don't have to hire a separate printing company to make your labels and you can print labels as you need them.
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Posted: May 14 2008
I've had numerous P-Touch models over the years, and I think the output they produce is superb. The software for the Mac, on the other hand, has lagged far behind its Windows counterpart. Older versions of the software, in particular, had problems with anything except TrueType fonts. Now I see that Brother finally released version 5 of the software for OS X. I downloaded it and was pleasantly surprised to see that it had an entirely different, more Mac-like interface, and it handled all of my fonts just fine. I was quite pleased until I tried to use some of my OTHER programs. It seems that if you uninstall the older version of the software before installing this one--something Brother tells you to do in the instructions--IT WILL WIPE OUT FILES USED BY OTHER PROGRAMS! So far the uninstaller has trashed Office 2008, Acrobat Pro, Adobe Reader, iWork '08, Adobe Creative Suite CS3 and OmniOutliner. It's hard to tell what others might be affected as well. I ended up having to do a clean reinstall of my system, which was NOT a small task. So, buy the printer if you like, but BEWARE the uninstaller!
