On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 21:00:20 GMT, Marcus Fox wrote:

Hypothetical question, because it very nearly happened to me, only my train
was 5 minutes late, and I just about made it.

If I have queued for 15 minutes without being served due to there being only
one person serving and some guy hogging the queue, and my train is about to
depart, can I board that train there and then and still obtain the
discounted rail fare available with my railcard from the on train ticket
person?

That depends if your station is part of a penalty fares scheme or not.
Mine isn't , I often don't buy a ticket (not helped by the
it-crawled-from-the-80s ticket machines SWT uses)

Steve

Steve Peake wrote:
That depends if your station is part of a penalty fares scheme or not.
Mine isn't , I often don't buy a ticket (not helped by the
it-crawled-from-the-80s ticket machines SWT uses)

I wish we still had the SWT machines on the stations I seem to use,
they've been mostly replaced by whizzy screen-based ones which are
demonstrably slower than the crawled-from-the-80s versions.

Although have some advantages (more stations, payment by plastic) speed
is not one of them.

"chris harrison" wrote in message
.. .

I wish we still had the SWT machines on the stations I seem to use,
they've been mostly replaced by whizzy screen-based ones which are
demonstrably slower than the crawled-from-the-80s versions.

Although have some advantages (more stations, payment by plastic) speed
is not one of them.

Much of the reduction in speed comes from the supposedly improved printers
that these machines use. It's the same problem as in supermarkets, where the
latest POS systems seem noticeably slower than their predecessors.

Jack Taylor wrote:
"chris harrison" wrote in message
.. .

I wish we still had the SWT machines on the stations I seem to use,
they've been mostly replaced by whizzy screen-based ones which are
demonstrably slower than the crawled-from-the-80s versions.

Although have some advantages (more stations, payment by plastic) speed
is not one of them.


Much of the reduction in speed comes from the supposedly improved printers
that these machines use. It's the same problem as in supermarkets, where the
latest POS systems seem noticeably slower than their predecessors.

POS system printers are moving away from impact printers (i.e.
dot-matrix) and heading for thermal printers, similar to fax machines.
Unlike impact printers, thermal printers can print anything...
unfortunately they are also a lot slower. Aesthetics over speed (a
pretty till receipt stays with you for longer than a wait at the till -
unless it's a pretty long wait!)


--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

In article ,
Dave Arquati wrote:

POS system printers are moving away from impact printers (i.e.
dot-matrix) and heading for thermal printers, similar to fax machines.
Unlike impact printers, thermal printers can print anything...
unfortunately they are also a lot slower. Aesthetics over speed (a
pretty till receipt stays with you for longer than a wait at the till -
unless it's a pretty long wait!)

Thermal printers are actually much faster than impact ones. Heavy duty
impact till printers manage 2 lines per second. Thermal ones do (IIRC)
5 at least. They were so much faster that they weren't a bottleneck in
programming any more. They do fade much faster too though, I have some
impact printer till receipts saved from 1984 (job relics from my EPOS
career :-)) but thermal ones from shops fade within weeks.

Nick
--
"And we will be restoring neurotypicality just as soon as we are sure
what is normal anyway. Thank you". -- not quite DNA

"Dave Arquati" wrote in message
...

POS system printers are moving away from impact printers (i.e.
dot-matrix) and heading for thermal printers, similar to fax machines.
Unlike impact printers, thermal printers can print anything...
unfortunately they are also a lot slower. Aesthetics over speed (a
pretty till receipt stays with you for longer than a wait at the till -
unless it's a pretty long wait!)

AIUI it was one of the reasons that a certain train operating company in our
area rejected Avantix version 1 as a potential replacement for SPORTIS -
ticket delivery was not deemed to be at an acceptable speed for on-train use
(although some of the National Express TOCs have taken it).

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 14:27:34 +0100, "Jack Taylor"
wrote:

Much of the reduction in speed comes from the supposedly improved printers
that these machines use. It's the same problem as in supermarkets, where the
latest POS systems seem noticeably slower than their predecessors.

And bus ticket machines. I think it's because the dot-matrix printer
has fallen out of favour as the thermal printer requires less
maintenance and does not have a ribbon to replace.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To e-mail use neil at the above domain

In article , chris harrison
writes
I wish we still had the SWT machines on the stations I seem to use,
they've been mostly replaced by whizzy screen-based ones which are
demonstrably slower than the crawled-from-the-80s versions.

Although have some advantages (more stations, payment by plastic) speed
is not one of them.

Huntingdon has just been equipped with new machines. Having a spare
moment, I asked the ticket clerk what she thought.

"For complex issues they're wonderful, but they're let down by the
printer. APTIS could just zip them out and I could get rid of queues in
no time."

(or something close to that).

--
Clive D.W. Feather | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Please reply to the Reply-To address, which is:

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 20:40:52 +0100, "Clive D. W. Feather"
wrote:

Huntingdon has just been equipped with new machines. Having a spare
moment, I asked the ticket clerk what she thought.

Do you happen to know of any other WAGN (or Silverlink) stations that
have changed over to what I assume is Tribute?
--
Stuart Johnson in Peterhead, Scotland

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