The Everyday IT Blog
Personal Computing Demystified.
Continuous Ink Systems for EPSON Printers
Mar 30th
We have a perennial problem at my house when it comes to printing.. we always seem to be out of ink. My wife is a Mary Kay consultant (ladies.. she would love to be your consultant if you don’t have one – go to www.marykay.com/lderryberry) and has a need to print out tons of color flyers, many times on demand. I don’t care whose printer you use – ink is expensive. It is honestly cheaper many times to trash your printer and buy a new one each time you run out of ink because the hardware is a loss leader – the real money is in the ink.
Enter the Continuous Ink System, or CIS. A CIS is a set of ink tanks, attached tubing and dummy print cartridges that are designed to fool your printer into thinking that the ink cartridges are always full. The printer ink is stored in the outboard ink tanks and is delivered to the dummy cartridges via the tubing. CIS systems ship with a full set of ink tanks – that’s the equivalent of about 8 standard-capacity ink cartridges for each cartridge color.. all for about 36 bucks. The cost savings is staggering when you consider that the 4-cartridge system that most printers today use cost about $17 each ($68 for a complete set of cartridges) times 8.. $544 worth of ink. Damn.
The ease of installing these systems really depends on your printer. I prefer Epson printers and is seems that most Epsons are fairly easy to install the CIS on. Bear in mind that with most printers you’ll have to leave the cover open so take a long hard look at your printer before you buy – all-in-one printers might not be the best choice if you do a lot of scanning. Print quality seems to be the same as standard cartridges out of the box, but here’s where you can improve upon the CIS system. You can buy higher-quality ink if necessary so you can really fine-tune your colors.
I’ll put a plug in for the ebay seller I bought my system from.. the ebay store is buyinknow123 and they are located in New York. The provided instructions were top-notch and they offer support after the sale if you need it.
Happy Printing!
Are you a Comcast subscriber? Read on about your AV protection..
Jan 21st
Many Internet service providers bundle antivirus protection in their service offerings for high-speed Internet service.. and Comcast is no exception. I heard rumblings that Comcast was making a change to the software that they provide so I had to check it out for myself. What I heard was indeed true.. Comcast has apparently dropped McAfee for Symantec! This is good news for many for several reasons :
- McAfee was a pretty sorry product in my opinion. I’m basing that solely on my personal experience.
- Easily 90% of the systems I see in my consulting practice are running a version of Norton that isn’t being updated because the user won’t pony up the cash for a subscription.
- There’s a Mac version!
With this new offering brings a new concern.. since Comcast has apparently ended their relationship with McAfee, how long until current McAfee users stop getting virus definition updates? I’ve got a Comcast source I’m going to engage to see if I can get an answer to that question. Mind you, I’m sure that it isn’t going to be a question of if.. it will certainly be when. Stay tuned for the answer on that.
Bottom line.. you should switch. Go to http://security.comcast.net for more info.
PS.. happy 2010! I haven’t posted in over a month, sorry for that. Things are incredibly busy at work, and honestly – I just don’t want to look at a computer once I make it home. Even as I type I’m out of town on business.
See you round the Internets!
`Tis the season.. but don't donate that PC yet.
Dec 7th
With the release of Windows 7 in time for the holiday buying season I’ll bet that more than one of you plan to purchase a new PC this year.. and you may already have. Congratulations! You’ll certainly
Photo by ercwttmn
enjoy better performance and increased efficiency from your new system, no doubt. So, what do you do with your old system? You could pass it down to a family member – many folks do that. You could keep it and use it for the kids. You could prop a door open with it. The list goes on and on. If you’re like most folks though.. you’ll gather up that old PC and take it down the street to your favorite charity and donate it for the good feeling and the tax writeoff. If this is your plan, STOP! Charity is a great thing.. but you need to think this through. You have personal data on that PC. You’ve done your online banking on that PC. You’ve probably allowed your browser to save some of your passwords on that PC. Just a few of the above items are more than enough information to allow someone to gain access to your entire electronic life at your expense. Did you attempt to delete the data? That delete key on the keyboard probably doesn’t work the way you think it does. For example.. say I keep a Word document on my hard drive that has all of those passwords that I don’t want to forget in it. I’ve decided after some time that I’m going to sell my old computer at a yard sale, so I go to “My Documents” and delete the file before I sell it. The file doesn’t show up in “My Documents” anymore and I’ve emptied my recycle bin, so it is gone, right?
Wrong. Very Wrong.
What really happened inside the guts of your machine is this: your operating system marked the spot where that file lives on disk as “overwriteable” so the space on disk can be used later. The file is still very much there, only hidden. Theoretically.. I could purchase your machine, take it home, remove the hard disk and plug it into my already-running PC with an adapter. I can run one of several programs I have for examining your old hard disk and “undelete” those files.. and Voila! I have your password file.
I’m going to do a little experiment. I’m going to head to my local donation center and purchase a used PC. I’ll bring it home and do just what I illustrated and see what I can see. I’ll chronicle the experience here to illustrate what I’ve been talking about and I’ll then properly destroy what I’ve found. Stay tuned!
PS.. by now you know that I support my little blogging habit with affiliate advertisements. Basically.. if you click a link or ad on this site and make a purchase I get a small cut. Please take a look at the ads.. there are some big names there. If you plan on making purchases with those advertisers anyway I’d appreciate it if you’d click on my ads to make those purchases. Thanks!
