I am totally addicted to this show and always wanted to be one of those couples who was "Clean Swept" (Side note - I appreciated that Clean Sweep always treated GLBT couples like any of the straight couples they had on their show. Heck, the fact that they even HAD GLBT couples on their show - very cool.) Not so much for the clearing of the clutter or the nice new rooms. Well, it was for one specific aspect of the rooms. One of the rooms was typically a home office and as part of his organizational contribution, Peter would tidy up the couple's files and paperwork, put it all in shiny new boxes and folders, and then label those boxes and folders using some handy dandy label maker.
I've never had a label maker.
Until now.
I believe that Brother must have heard my psychic longing for nice, neat labels. They sent me one of their P-touch® Labellers (PT-1230PC) to try out.
It arrived in the best external packaging EVER - a plain brown box covered with examples of their labels. Whoever wrote these labels - funny.
The P-touch 1230 was very easy to use. I'm generally on a Mac (it's Windows-based), so I hooked it up to my Acer netbook. Super easy. There is a "lite" version of the labeling software on the device - so it is completely plug-n-play - you don't have to install anything on the computer you're using it with. Very handy for a number of reasons. Mainly, it contributes to the portability of the product - I can use it at home and then take it to the office and not have to worry about carrying a disk or downloading software. Also great for offices who have managed desktops.
When I plugged it into a USB port, Windows asked me what I wanted to do. One of the options was "use the software on the device". Up popped the label editor. It detected the ribbon size and cartridge I had in the labeler which was handy. Essentially, I could just start typing. Which I did. Tried a couple of the fonts (it picked up all the fonts I had installed on the netbook).
And because I'm a sucker for wingdings and other little graphic-gimmicks, I experimented with the "frames" that Brother includes in the software. Here, I framed my phone number with the "phone" frame (so someone can call if I ever lose my coffee mug). This was not my fav frame, but it is a good example of the little graphic extras that are included. Full set of my pics are here.
I thought the PT1230 labeler would be perfect if you were an event organizer. It's super light and portable. And you COULD use it for registration labels or other things that ALWAYS need labeled at an event. I like the input via the computer keyboard. The layout of a label is surprisingly versatile. You can have single line, double line and image components all in one label. (Note - this is a screen shot from Brother's support site for the PT1230. I couldn't figure out how to do a decent screencap on the netbook - sigh, once you go Mac you can never really go back).
The PT1230 labeler retails for $69.99 CDN which seems quite reasonable. The bigger cost comes in when you purchase the label cartridges - they range in price from $17 to $30 depending on the type of material. Each cartridge usually has 8 meters of label material. My average test label was about 10 cm long. That's 80 labels or so. So that's, what, 21 or 22 cents a label for the least expensive label material? As someone who has stayed up very late at night, printing out page after page of tiny little words to glue onto a USB key, well, that 21 cents per would have been totally worth it :)
As a side note, Brother is starting to engage in social media which I take as a very encouraging sign. This is the second blogger relations campaign (the first was for one of their wireless printers for small business) that I have engaged in with them (with two different agencies - so it seems it is a cross-product approach for them as an organization). They have a Facebook group. And a Flickr account- where I pulled perhaps my favourite label-related picture from them - a neatly labeled "Plateau de fromages".
Photo Credit (first photo): The Container Store (omg - I WISH we had a Container Store in Canada)