Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Glad I Invested In It, June 22, 2003
I will be using my unit for home purposes and so I was at first reluctant to shell-out the money for it but am now very glad I did. Like a lot of electronic items these days, it has bells and whistles I will never use but..... It has bells and whistles other units DON'T have that I WILL use. I'll use mine as a stand alone unit for it has enough Font, Size, Sytle and Width choices to suit my needs and wants now and for the forseeable future. I haven't loaded the software for computer use and I can only imagine the miriad of choices and functions this little machine offers. The carrying case is great for storing the unit safe and sound out of the way when done using it. To me, the little "stick" that came with the unit to separate the tape backing from the tape itself, is one of the greatest "I-wish-I-would-of-thought-of-it" items I've seen in a long time. Works like a champ. To be honest, I've used this unit less than an hour and........I will wrap this up by saying again, I'm glad I invested in it.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Help me - I'm a labeling fool, August 22, 2006
I've had an elderly P-touch for years (the second model that came out), so imagine my shock when I started to use my new 2610 model. I hooked it up to the computer, imported my list of titles from an Excel file, and clicked the button. Label after label after label printed out and cut itself while I played computer Solitaire! It was so much fun, I went around the house looking for new things to label. And I can use ANY TrueType font in my computer - not just the ones that come with the machine. I know it's spendy, but if you're thinking of upgrading your old P-Touch, this one is REALLY worth the money.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Another fine P-Touch product. However....., August 23, 2006
I purchased a Brother P-Touch label printer about 12 years ago and it's still going strong. It doesn't have a fraction of the bells and whistles that the 2610 has but for what I use it for, it's perfect. So it was with no hesitation that, when I needed a more capable printer, I went right to Brother and bought the 2610. (NOTE: The only real difference between the 2600 and 2610 is the latter includes a plastic carrying case. Otherwise they're identical.)
This is an extremely versatile printer, capable of using AV labels and TZ tapes in widths from 1/4"-1" (6-14mm). It has a good sized keyboard, multiple fonts/styles, and a host of other features which are already well documented at Brother's site. I selected the 2610 mainly because I wanted a label maker that I could use with my Macintosh computer, and the 2610 delivers. That said, there were some unexpected/unpleasant surprises.
Surprise #1: This thing rips through batteries (EIGHT AA's) faster than I thought possible. My old P-Touch, under comparable use, will get about 6-8 MONTHS of life from a set of four alkaline AA's. This one will get maybe 6-8 WEEKS. So either stock up on rechargeable batteries or, better yet, use the AC adapter.
Surprise #2: It amazed me beyond words that my old P-Touch would spit out a 3" label in about three seconds, while this one takes about twice as long to produce the same label. I'm not sure why this is, but it's a disappointment.
Surprise #3: When printing from the computer (virtually 100% of my labels are from the computer), the 2610 will trim about 1" of label before it starts printing. Which means that every time you print a label from the computer you throw away 1" of label. Print 30 labels and you throw away nearly a yard of expensive label material! (If you print multiple copies of the same label, however, you only lose a single inch.)
Surprise #4, Part 1: While this printer does work with my Macintosh (tip: download the updated drivers and software from Brother's web site), the software is really bad. It's CLEARLY a ported Windows application and it has very few redeeming virtues. It has absolutely none of the look and feel of any Mac app (it really does look like a Windows app, with the Mac menu bar grafted to the top of the screen). It often forgets your default settings so you'll find yourself reopening palettes each time you launch the app. It crashes quite a bit. It doesn't respond to 'standard' key commands (e.g., "T" for the text tool). It occasionally forgets which font you used in a saved label, so you'll have made a label in Times, saved it, and reopened it to discover it's now in, say, Zapf Dingbats. It ALWAYS assumes you've made changes to a label even if all you've done is opened and printed it, so it's always asking you to save changes when you close any label. All in all the software is VERY annoying. Once you're used to its quirks you can produce some decent labels, but no simple labeling app should have so many problems like this. (I can't say how it works on Windows, however.)
Surprise #4, Part 2: Speaking of the software, it DOES allow you to import your own artwork for use on the label maker, which is great. What's astonishing is the fact that it doesn't accept TIFF or PNG or even JPEG files. It uses, of all things, PICT files, the likes of which haven't been widely seen on Macintosh computers in nearly seven years.
So, I'm giving it three out of five stars. It loses two stars mainly because of the bad software and the nonsensical lose-an-inch printing penalty, with the other gripes bringing up the rear. If Brother were to spend a little effort in writing some decent Mac software, kill the lose-an-inch printing penalty, and speed up the print engine to a reasonable degree, it would get five stars without a blink.
EDIT 2008-Jan-06: A couple of things have happened since I wrote this review which are worth noting. First, Brother has released updated P-Touch Editor software available as a free download from Brother's site (version 5.0 as of this writing, up from version 3.2 in my original review). Although it's markedly better than the 3.2 version it's still obviously a ported-from-Windows app and isn't as smooth or elegant as you'd expect a Macintosh app to be. Even so, this would bump my rating up to four stars.
HOWEVER, I've also had the thoroughly distasteful experience of dealing with Brother's customer support (outsourced to India, which in turn refers to China or Japan, so it's totally a mess). In short, it's important to note that it is *IMPOSSIBLE* to use any application OTHER than Brother's P-Touch Editor to create labels on this printer that are longer or shorter than 3". This is not made clear anywhere in Brother's advertisements or documentation, and it was only after weeks of emailing Brother did I get this information. This makes the label maker significantly less useful for computer-related functions; for example, creating an inventory database that allows you to generate on-the-fly labels. Brother instructs you to export your data and create a merge in the P-Touch Editor software, which is a clunky workaround at best. Because of this issue I would revoke a star, thus bringing me back to the original three-star review.
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