can anyone recommend a decent reasonably-priced small label printer that works well with linux and standard text-processing tools. powered from the USB interface would be nice but not essential. multiple suppliers of consumables would also be nice but, i guess, unlikey. i want to print some labels to put on stuff. like disk identifiers to stick on the handles of my hot-swap bays. nothing fancy, just needs to do a simple job, do it well, and not cost too much per label. if anyone has any tricks for controlling them from the command line (rather than openoffice or some gui label-printing app), i'd love to hear about it. e.g. in the first instance, I want to print sticky lables based on the output of: $ /bin/ls /dev/disk/by-id/| sed -rne '/ata-(ST|WDC)/s/ata-.*_//p' | grep -v -- -part 6VP3FWAG 9VP16X03 9VP18CCV 9VP4P4LN 9VP4RPXK 9VP509T5 WD-WCASJ2114122 WD-WCASJ2195141 WD-WMAV50817803 WD-WMAV50933036 i also want to be able to print once-off labels with something as simple as 'echo text | lpr -Plabelprinter' craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #256: You need to install an RTFM interface.