Receipt Racer – Receipt Printer-Based Game

Some ingenious nerds at undef.com have converted an old Epson TM-T88 printer to drive a racing game called Receipt Racer. It’s a pretty solid waste of paper, but given how many receipts end up in the trash immediately after printing, it seems like a net push. You can also play the not receipt version of the game on their site.

receipt racer from d_effekt on Vimeo.

Epson TM-T88V

WordPress has some fun analytics and stats for how visitors find the site, and lately I’ve been getting a lot of traction on the term TM-T88V. Apparently I tossed a typo up on the TM-T88IV video review post and thought people were hitting the site off their own typo. And then I got a press release about the Epson TM-T88V receipt printer, and a couple requests to get it up on the site. So it’s sharing time!

The TM-T88V receipt printer continues Epson’s quest for the ultimate printing experience. At a blisteringly fast 11.8″ per second, the TM-T88V is the fastest receipt printer on the market. Stock up on bandaids because your employees are going to suffer from chronic paper cuts after you install this printer. It’s also 50% faster than the TM-T88IV, so if they keep that pace the TM-T88X will print at 83″ per second. I can’t wait for that, the paper will just appear magically.

The mean time between failures (MTBF) is a determination of how long a product can operate before it fails to the point that it has to be sent in for repair. It’s usually calculated in hours run, and is a sign of how awesome a product is. The TM-T88V has a MTBF of 360,000 hours. I love back of the envelope math, and that’s a little over 41 years of constant use. 41 years. Who does that. So one of these printers is like 340 bucks, that cuts it down to $8.30 per year, or $0.001 per hour of use. Tenth of a cent per hour, and that’s the average failure time.

Either receipt printer manufacturers got tired of returns on legacy hardware or USB interfaces actually cut production costs, because almost every company is building dual interface USB/Legacy receipt printers nowadays, and the TM-T88V is no exception. I guess it helps that a product with a potential 41 year lifespan has the potential to connect to current computers. I really do appreciate the dual interface method; as a tech supporter I used to feel horribly when a customer would get a new PC and try to install their parallel printer on their now USB-only PC.

Energy and resource-efficiency is gaining footholds in the POS industry and so now manufacturers are starting to apply these techniques to their printer lines. Star’s TSP100ECO and now the Epson TM-T88V are Energy Star compliant, so you can save on energy costs and maybe even media. The TM-T88V also allows for print options & configurations so you can use less paper per receipt. So if you combine the printer with its low energy & paper usage with BPA free paper, you can get some pretty solid karma and good feelings. Dude. Karma.

Epson TM-T88IV Video Review

Jaime has been pounding out reviews like it’s going out of style, and so I’m sharing yet another with you. This time we’re covering the Epson TM-T88IV thermal receipt printer, the one that impact printers want and other thermal printers want to be. There’s a reason that almost every thermal receipt printer on the market emulates the ESC/POS standard, and the Epson TM-T88 line is it.

The TM-T88IV’s been on the market for a few years now, which means that it’s established as a versatile and easy to use printer. Recently, their drivers have been updated to require no restart, no headaches, nothing more than picking your printer and interface from an installation wizard. I’m pretty sure a lot of manufacturers are worried for if/when the TM-T88V drops.

Anyway, here’s the vidya.