I've been meaning to upgrade my old Brother P-touch labeller, but it is still going strong after about 6 years of regular use, so why interrupt a good thing? The only issue has been that the replacement tapes are expensive. However, as I recently found to my delight, Amazon's price is about half what I would pay at a big office supply store in my town. The roll of labels has about 26 feet of tape, and at about 3" per label, that works out to a cost of just under 5 cents per label. I think that's reasonable for a long-lasting label, and if you buy the tapes in packages of 2, it would be even less. Of course, one could use paper labels generated on a computer, and if you have a lot of file folders to label, that would certainly be faster. The great point about these labels is that they work so well on glass, wood, and shiny surfaces, and they peel off without leaving a residue when you're ready to change the label. On paper (such as file folders), they stick fast and don't peel off; you need to just place another one over the original one when you change topics for the file. As for the difficulty of peeling the backing off, which other writers have noted was a drawback, I find that it's not hard as long as you peel from the CORNER first. If you have a fingernail to do this, perfect; if not, a sharp edge, such as a knife or letter opener would do the job. Once you get used to starting at the corner, there's never a problem peeling off the backing. I love these labels for spice jars, files, warranty dates on gadgets, labels on cords, and all sorts of uses around the house. Since you get about 100 labels per roll (at 3" each), a roll goes pretty far. There are several colors and different widths. I like the half-inch tape, which takes any of the 5 sizes of print generated by my labeller very well. The print is very crisp and visible from several feet away. A good product, all in all!
