In article , chris harrison
writes
I wish we still had the SWT machines on the stations I seem to use,
they've been mostly replaced by whizzy screen-based ones which are
demonstrably slower than the crawled-from-the-80s versions.

Although have some advantages (more stations, payment by plastic) speed
is not one of them.

Huntingdon has just been equipped with new machines. Having a spare
moment, I asked the ticket clerk what she thought.

"For complex issues they're wonderful, but they're let down by the
printer. APTIS could just zip them out and I could get rid of queues in
no time."

(or something close to that).

--
Clive D.W. Feather | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Please reply to the Reply-To address, which is:

Jack Taylor wrote:
"chris harrison" wrote in message
.. .

I wish we still had the SWT machines on the stations I seem to use,
they've been mostly replaced by whizzy screen-based ones which are
demonstrably slower than the crawled-from-the-80s versions.

Although have some advantages (more stations, payment by plastic) speed
is not one of them.


Much of the reduction in speed comes from the supposedly improved printers
that these machines use. It's the same problem as in supermarkets, where the
latest POS systems seem noticeably slower than their predecessors.

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!)


--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 14:27:34 +0100, "Jack Taylor"
wrote:

Much of the reduction in speed comes from the supposedly improved printers
that these machines use. It's the same problem as in supermarkets, where the
latest POS systems seem noticeably slower than their predecessors.

And bus ticket machines. I think it's because the dot-matrix printer
has fallen out of favour as the thermal printer requires less
maintenance and does not have a ribbon to replace.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To e-mail use neil at the above domain

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

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 20:40:52 +0100, "Clive D. W. Feather"
wrote:

Huntingdon has just been equipped with new machines. Having a spare
moment, I asked the ticket clerk what she thought.

Do you happen to know of any other WAGN (or Silverlink) stations that
have changed over to what I assume is Tribute?
--
Stuart Johnson in Peterhead, Scotland

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"Dave Arquati" wrote in message
...

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!)

AIUI it was one of the reasons that a certain train operating company in our
area rejected Avantix version 1 as a potential replacement for SPORTIS -
ticket delivery was not deemed to be at an acceptable speed for on-train use
(although some of the National Express TOCs have taken it).

On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:34:49 +0100, Helen Deborah Vecht
wrote:

Roland Perry typed

There's a Passenger Charter which says that you should only wait 5
minutes to buy a ticket. But the charter is silent about what happens
when that time limit is exceeded (which it so often is).

Really?!?! I arrived at Watford Junction about 10 minutes before my
train's scheduled time. While we waited in the queue, we saw that the
train was about 10 minutes late on the station monitors.

details snipped

When we commented that it was good that the train was running late, we
were told we should have allowed 20 minutes ticket time.


Silverlink passengers charter at http://www.silverlink-trains.com/
states "We aim to serve you within five minutes at peak times and
three minutes at other times".

You might think that aim is unrealistic.
--
Peter Lawrence

In message , at 17:15:28 on
Wed, 25 Aug 2004, Peter Lawrence remarked:
Silverlink passengers charter at http://www.silverlink-trains.com/
states "We aim to serve you within five minutes at peak times and
three minutes at other times".

You might think that aim is unrealistic.

Indeed. And in fact every train company appears to have the same
charter.

I suppose they *define* a peak time as "whenever the queue is more than
3 minutes", as none of them have any alternative on offer.
--
Roland Perry

In article , Roland
Perry writes
In message , at 17:15:28 on
Wed, 25 Aug 2004, Peter Lawrence remarked:
Silverlink passengers charter at http://www.silverlink-trains.com/
states "We aim to serve you within five minutes at peak times and
three minutes at other times".

You might think that aim is unrealistic.

Indeed. And in fact every train company appears to have the same
charter.

I suppose they *define* a peak time as "whenever the queue is more than
3 minutes", as none of them have any alternative on offer.

High Wycombe has 3 ticket windows open at peak times. At 7.50am this
morning only 1 of the windows had a sales clerk sitting at it - the
other 2 were open but no one was manning it - they had walked off.

Result? Long queue for the one ticket window.

Credit Card ticket machine wasn't working either.
--
Andrew
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