Dymo recently released the LabelManager PC II label printer, a small nicely designed tape label printer that print to up to 24 mm Dymo labels. The LabelManager PC II is Mac OS X compatible.

The LabelManager PC II has a nice design. It has a small footprint, and a nice design touch. The case is made from grey coloured metal. The unit opens at one side, and can harbour tape cassettes ranging from the smallest 9 mm to the largest 24 mm.

Dymo’s software on Mac OS X automatically recognized the LabelManager PC II, after having installed the driver. The driver itself is also automatically recognized by Printer Setup, a nice touch and not one we’re used to on Mac OS X. The software allows you to customize the tape label’s text font, whether or not you want a border around the text and whether the text itself should be aligned in the middle of the label or not.

The label length is customizable as well. You can choose for an automatic length, based on the text and symbols on the tape, or for a fixed length, for example if you want to limit the empty space at both sides of the label content.

What's the use?

Why would you use a LabelManager PC II on a Mac? Well, for starters, Dymo’s labels exist in a sort of very flexible nylon. Those labels are used to label anything from power cables to Ethernet patch cables. The regular plastic labels are used on cabinets, boxes and basically everything that you used to label in the old times, using a Dymo handheld labeller machine.

Those labellers still exist, and nowadays work on battery or auxiliary power, instead of on human muscle power. But the customization capabilities of a LabelManager PC II are only limited by the system you use to drive it. If you have a myriad of fonts and symbol fonts to choose from, like many Mac users have, you can create very useful and informative labels with this small device.

The LabelManager PC II is fast and quiet when operating, so it won’t sit in your way, and as it takes up little space, it literally won’t do that. One tiny drawback is that you can’t hook up more than one of these gems. Whereas you can do that with LabelWriters, provided they’re all of a different kind, you can’t with the LabelManager PC II.