I've been using a Zebra QL240 Plus printer today to generate pallet labels.

This has saved me a tonne of time.   I've been creating my labels using Label Vista,   the bundled software that comes with Zebra printers.

Get the labels looking nice.   Test print them by hooking up a printer on your PC using USB.

Now here comes the time saving bit.    Save the label file in Label Vista.    Now add the resultant LBL file as content to your compact framework application's project file.    Then simply read the file in code and send it to the appropriate com port.

This way you get all the speed of a nice WYSIWYG environment, with all of the benefit of being able to then use these label format as is, in a mobile line of business solution.

I made a further refinement which searches and replaces any text field on my label to substitute in my own values.   so xxBARCODE becomes the barcode we want etc.