Review on PT1290 Home and Office Label Printer by Brother by Rail Basri

I am very disappointed with this labeller. I had an old p-touch at work that I loved and when it finally died I found that they no longer make that model. After reading the reviews I settled on the Brother PT1290 as a replacement. I wish I'd paid more attention to the reviewers who said this thing wasted tape. My guess is that Brother wants people to have to buy ribbon more often, but leaving about half the ribbon on a cartridge unused is incredibly wasteful and they rip off their customers. My co-workers used to borrow my label maker but now that I have a Brother label maker nobody wants to borrow it because it throws away so much clean tape all they have to do is cut it off. When I go from one font size to the next smaller size, the smaller font gets shorter but just as wide! I switched to a smaller font size to fit my label in the file folder tab, but that didn't change the length of the label at all, it just made it harder to read. I suspect this is just another attempt by Brother to get you to use as much ribbon as possible so you need to buy replacement cartridges more often. This experience really pulled me away from my brother. Why would I support a company that cares so little about the environment just so they can make more money? I also find the controls unnecessarily complicated. My old labeler was intuitive, but this one requires me to pull out instructions to figure out how to do certain things. The arrangement of the various buttons is also annoying - I hit the wrong button far more often on this machine than on my old one. I just can't find too much on this labeller. I hate replacing a product that works, but maybe I just need to bite the bullet and look for a more economical and environmentally friendly labeling machine. But don't worry, this one won't go to waste - it will make a great doorstop.