i needed to print a few things at work. an everyday occurrence sure, but this print job was different. i needed to print 100 labels to stick on large envelopes to mail out some sales collateral to some of my clients. i usually don't print out labels and wasn't exactly sure how to print the labels i needed which were 3.5" x 4.5" labels with my company logo and address in the upper right corner. it turned out that the only way to print these was on an oki microline 390 turbo 24 pin dot matrix printer that our computer systems person hauled to my desk. this old fashioned printer has the little tractor roller on both sides and the paper that goes in must have the holes that line up with the roller in order to be pulled through. after a few tries, i finally got my labels printed. for every 3 labels i printed 1 or 2 would be so illegible that i would have to print them again. it took me almost all day to get the labels done, next time i'll give it to someone else to do. either way, the sound of the dot matrix printer was a bit jarring in the white noise background sound of our office, especially when compared with the sound of the hewlett packard laser jet 2100 that i normally print to.

listen 1 is the sound of the oki printer making 3 address labels.
listen 2 is the sound of the hp printer printing the addresses on 3 sheets of paper.