In article ,
Dave Arquati wrote:

POS system printers are moving away from impact printers (i.e.
dot-matrix) and heading for thermal printers, similar to fax machines.
Unlike impact printers, thermal printers can print anything...
unfortunately they are also a lot slower. Aesthetics over speed (a
pretty till receipt stays with you for longer than a wait at the till -
unless it's a pretty long wait!)

Thermal printers are actually much faster than impact ones. Heavy duty
impact till printers manage 2 lines per second. Thermal ones do (IIRC)
5 at least. They were so much faster that they weren't a bottleneck in
programming any more. They do fade much faster too though, I have some
impact printer till receipts saved from 1984 (job relics from my EPOS
career :-)) but thermal ones from shops fade within weeks.

Nick
--
"And we will be restoring neurotypicality just as soon as we are sure
what is normal anyway. Thank you". -- not quite DNA