For inscrutable reasons known only to Microsoft (perhaps) the PocketPC version of Windows CE was developed without any printing capabilities. Owing to this unbelievable oversight we had to develop a printer interface which would allow the printing of a remotely stored invoice on a local printer.

Since the only printer options available on a PocketPC device were serial and IRDA we chose to use a serial printer. This was because IRDA printers tended to be larger, and the IRDA interface could be overly sensitive to variations in alignment. Most people would not experience too much difficulty printing with an IRDA device. This would involve proper initial alignment of the IRDA ports and keeping them aligned long enough for printing to finish.

We were not confident that the least technically capable route salesman would be able to use IRDA reliably. However, we were confident that any route salesman could plug in a serial cable properly (provided it had differing ends) and have it work.

The most suitable serial printer for our experiments turned out to be the CBM iDP3111. It is a simple and portable point of sale printer which prints up to forty columns of clear text. It weighs very little and can be carried attached to a belt. Because it is a dot matrix impact printer it can produce up to three copies at once.