Brother to launch a new tape printer – the TP-M5000N – and it’s a beast!

Brother is soon to launch the TP-M5000N tape printer. But unlike regular Dymo and Brother “tape” printers that print continuous label tape to be used as labels, the TPM5000N is printing… well, I guess the best way to describe it is like selotape or packing tape.

The idea seems to be that a reseller would take the blank tape and the ribbon cartridge and print customised tape, to then be sold on to end users. For example, customers could request packing tape with their company logo on as a branding exercise, or packing tape with warnings or other messages on. There are various colours and widths of tape, and various colours of ribbon cartridges, this means they can be combined to give a 2 colour tape.

Another likely market would be a retailer, like a gift shop, that could buy one to print their own tapes such as ‘Happy Birthday’ that could be used to wrap presents etc. Of course there are plenty of pre-printed tapes that already say “Happy Birthday” or “Happy Anniversary” and so on, and these will almost certainly be cheaper than printing their own. But the difference here is that an end customer could walk in to the gift shop and order tape that says “Happy 40th Birthday Bob”, the shop would then print a roll of tape in the customers choice of colours and the customer then has a highly personalised roll of tape.

The one noticable thing about this printer though is the size – it’s huge. When you see a picture it looks like the size of a Dymo LabelWriter or Brother QL printer, that is until you see it against something else for scale and then you realise how big it is.

We have no information on costs yet, but we expect it’s not going to be cheap. Also, no news yet on an exact launch date, but we’re expecting a UK launch in Q4 2014. More news to follow!

New Dymo LabelWriter Labels due out imminently

Dymo King has learned that very shortly the following new label types will be available for the Dymo Labelwriter range –

Polypropelene labels (ie. water resistant – by popular demand!)

High Yield labels – these will be the popular 99012 and 99014 labels, but with many more on the roll giving better value for money and fewer roll changes. The bad news is this is acheived by rotating the labels into landscape rather than portrait format, which means… think about it… they will be too wide to fit the output slot of the standard printers. So the Hi-Yield labels will only fit the extra wide Labelwriter 4XL printer. So “bummer” if you already have an LW450/Turbo/Twin/Duo (or earlier), “Yay” if you have a 4XL already, and “oh well it might be worth the extra to go for the wide version after all” if you are still deciding…

There’s also a super secret label – but we can’t tell you about that…

Rumour: Labelwriter 4XL launch imminent

The Extra Wide LabelWriter that we exclusively revealed way back in May 2009 is finally due to launch in the UK. It’s been a long time coming, but after several delays the new printer is expected to be launched imminently.

There is currently some confusion as to the name – several of the main distributors are listing the product as “LabelWriter 450XL” (to match the LabelWriter 450 series), while Dymo insiders indicate the product will retain the US name of “LabelWriter 4XL”.

A couple of stores are already listing the product on their websites, although none actually have any stock at this time.

You can now pre-order the Labelwriter 4XL printers at the Dymo Label Printer website, and they will ship them for free by next day courier as soon as they receive the first UK stocks.

We will, of course, keep you updated with news on the Dymo 4XL label printer.

Dymo LabelWriter Windows 7 Driver Coming Soon (UK)

The Windows 7 drivers will be made available with the release of the new DYMO Label™ v.8 software. The UK release is expected “at the end of September” – I’m assuming that’s 2009… 😉

It’s not clear at this stage if any of the old LW3xx series will be supported, but I think it’s fairly safe to assume that the really old ones that weren’t Vista compatible probably won’t be Windows 7 compatible either.

Currently it is not possible to get the LabelWriter working with the Windows 7 drivers using the latest version of the Dymo Label Software.

Rumour: New addition to range will launch soon!

Dymo insiders have revealed a new addition to the LabelWriter range. While details can’t be revealed at this stage we can mention that the new product will be sold both as an ‘add-on’ for existing Dymo Labelwriter 400 users, and also as a ‘bundle’ option for new LabelWriters.

The launch has been delayed from Q1 to Q2, but is expected to be announced very shortly and is pending agreements with 3rd parties.

Sources close to Dymo suggest that this will be a very well received product, especially amongst E-Bayers and micro/small business users.

Watch this space for further updates!

Rumour: New LabelWriter printer under discussion

Dymo has been consulting a number of it’s main resellers regarding a new addition to the popular Dymo LabelWriter range. They were given an overview of the mystery product and asked for their opinions on it. It is believed that no decision has been reached on whether or not to launch the special model into the UK market.