Seagull Windows Printer Drivers
Features and Benefits

Table of Contents

Topics covered on this page:

Superior Compatibility and Networkability

The power and convenience of its printer drivers are one of the biggest advantages Windows has over other operating systems. With the right driver you can talk to a printer from any Windows program you own. The drivers all install the same way and provide a generally similar "look-and-feel" when you need to change printer driver settings. Properly written Windows drivers also integrate seamlessly with the networking capabilities of Windows. So you can talk to printers anywhere on your network without having to leave your own workstation.

Optimizing Thermal Label Printing Under Windows

Most thermal label printers have a variety of special features designed to give you the best bar codes and fastest printing possible. Unfortunately, when Microsoft created the standard for how Windows programs would talk to printer drivers, they were more focused on the needs of page printers like lasers and ink-jets. So, when you use a conventional Windows printer driver with a standard Windows program to print to a thermal label printer, you typically can't get access to certain features that optimize printing performance. These features include printing bar codes built into the printer (instead of as bitmaps), automatic serialization, and the storage and reuse of the parts of your labels that don't change from label to label. To give BarTender access to these and other printer features, Seagull designed its own Windows drivers for use with the industry's most popular thermal label printers.

The Convenience of Windows and
Full Power of Your Label Printer

Our BarTender label printing software works with any printer that has a true Windows printer driver available for it. But you get increased performance on thermal label printers when you use BarTender with one of our own Windows drivers. BarTender automatically recognizes when a Seagull printer driver is in use and activates special functions in order to access the printer's high-performance label printing features. And, because these are still 100% Windows-compatible drivers, you can use them as you normally would with standard software programs other than BarTender. (Unfortunately, it's just not possible for these drivers to access the previously-mentioned high performance thermal label printing features using programs other than BarTender.)

Designer Typefaces on Thermal Printers

Thermal printers are fast, but they come with relatively few built-in typefaces. That can complicate your design job if you (or a customer) prefers to use one or more special typefaces. Our Windows printer drivers bring the full power of Windows TrueType fonts to your thermal printer. If you can see it in Windows, then you can see it on your labels.

Supports Windows Graphics and
Printers' Built-in Bar Codes & Text

Seagull's printer drivers allow the printing of high resolution "raster" graphics, so you can output a "picture" of just about anything. You can also access all of your printer's built-in typefaces and many of the built-in bar codes. (When used with BarTender, you can access all of the internal bar codes.)

Extra High Speed Capabilities For Large Print Jobs

When using our drivers to print multiple identical labels using BarTender or any other standard Windows program, only the first label gets sent to your printer. We then configure the printer to automatically output the remaining copies at the printer's full-rated speed. And even more optimization is possible if you are using BarTender. If some parts of your label image are constant while other parts are changing, only the changing parts get output with each label. Outputting the minimum amount of data in this manner maximizes the throughput of your high performance printer because it spends less time waiting for data and more time printing.