There's been quite a lot of good news for Electron owners recently. Of particular interest has been the number of good quality printers now available.

Among these is the Taxan/Kaga KPB10 which, by shopping around, you can usually get at a bargain price.

This printer uses a dot matrix to form its letters. This is the standard type of medium-priced printer and means that with text you can see the dotty nature of the letters.

Dot matrix printers are excellent for printing graphics as well as the more normal text.

The KP810 comes ready to use with any paper up to 10" wide. There's no extra to pay for tractor feeds, roll paper holders or single sheet mechanisms. This printer can cope with the lot.

Fitting paper is easy and admirably described in the comprehensive user guide provided.

One extra you will need is the cable linking printer to the Electron. This is because the printer is designed to be used with a wide variety of micros and different computers use different connectors. Some dealers will supply the lead at no extra cost.

One of the main things to look for when buying a printer is Epson compatibility.

Printers have to understand the commands sent from the micro and much commercial Software assumes that you've got an Epson-compatible printer - that is, one which understands the same control codes as an Epson printer.

The Taxan is fully Epson-compatible. This means that, for instance, Mini Office works perfectly and its double height and width modes are printed out properly.

Like many current printers, the Taxan features a Near Letter Quality (or NLQ) mode. In this each line of text is printed twice and the paper is moved 1/20th of an inch betweeen the prints.

This masks the dot matrix nature of the printing, and as a different character set is used with proper descenders, a very good standard of printed text is achieved.

There are three ways of obtaining NLQ mode. A command can be sent by the Electron, and could be issued from within your own program:

Secondly an internal switch can be set so that the printer always runs in NLQ mode.

Lastly, and most easily, if the form feed switch is held down while the power is switched on the printer will automatically enter NLQ mode.

The KP810 controls are simple. There is a power on/off switch and only three other controls are used for most work.

The online switch can be used to interrupt printing and take the printer off-line. The Electron will wait until the printer is ready and online again before sending more data.

While the computer is offline the line feed switch will advance the paper one line and the form feed switch will move the paper to the start of the next page.

One extra switch allows you to turn off the out of paper warning. This is useful when working with single sheets of paper as it allows you to print right down to the bottom of the page.

Inside the computer are 20 more switches called DIP switches.

They are used to select such things as the character set English and foreign - and the mode of the printer. Most will rarely need to be altered.

This is just as well because the machine has to be part dismantled to get at them. That's a real pity, particularly as the automatic paper feed switch is down there, too.

Different print styles are easily selected by sending the appropriate control codes. The two popular typewriter sizes, Pica and Elite, can be chosen as well as a condensed mode which allow 132 letters across the page rather than the normal 80 characters.

Italic or enlarged text can be selected and subscripts and superscripts are possible, along with foreign language accents and underlined text.

Text can be spaced proportionally, which means that the thin letters such as T take up less room than fat letters like W. As a result the print has a much neater appearance.

One piece of software you will need is a screen dump, which copies the contents of the screen, graphics and text to paper. The screen dump used for the illustration above was featured in the March 1985 issue of Electron User.

The KP810 is a black and white printer, but a good screen dump will print the colours in different shades of grey.

Getting the best of the extra features requires a good user manual. Unfortunately the Electron and BBC computers handle commands in a different way from the examples given in the handbook.

Once you've got the hang of how to enter commands for the printer it's quite easy, but if you're not sure this handbook will give you problems - though having said that, it's still one of the best printer manuals around.

The Taxan, like many other printers, has its cables in the wrong place. Round the back of the printer there is an area of chaos, with cables and paper all fighting for the same bit of space.

This is fine if you can leave things permanently set up, but very awkward for moving. Apart from that the KP810 is well built and attractively styled.

Its excellent NLQ, its fast - 140 characters a second - printing, its ability to cope with many types of paper, plus good graphics and many print styles make the Taxan Kaga KP810 very good value for money.

If you want a good, medium-priced and versatile printer, this could well fit the bill.