THE NEWS IN PRINT

Many users around the world have complained that their printer prompts a cartridge change when they felt that the cartridge had enough to fuel a lot more prints. This claim has been proved before and Farhad Manjoo, a writer at Slate.com narrates his side of the story and how he overcame the lying vultures.

Manjoo bought Brother HL-2040 laser printer a few years back and the printer has worked in supreme touch ever since. One day, it suddenly stopped working and demanded a toner change. Manjoo smelt a rat as none of the prints had faded. He Googled and found a fix on fixyourownprinter.com to override the toner sensors. Manjoo stuck an electrical tape on the toner’s sensor and the printer ever since has delivered hundreds of prints without any sign of fading; yet. Another user on the website has quoted that he was able to print 1800 pages before his toner finally ran out.

Printer manufacturers trick users into believing that their ink/toner has run out, as the money they make is mainly through consumables and not the printer itself. A few law suits (that are known) filed and won and a lot more to be filed in the future. Despite legal action, printer manufacturers will not stop cheating customers. This is probably the reason how Kodak has pitched in by offering ink cartridges at a cheaper price and yet produce a lot more prints.

As Christopher Null states - Saving a tree may be good, but saving a whole bunch of oil and keeping a cartridge full of chemicals out of the landfill: Even better.

Telecommuting is growing in popularity because it is something that just makes sense. Commuting is annoying for workers, bad for the environment and just not necessary now that advanced technology makes remote collaboration easy and affordable for businesses of all sizes. However, as people have started to move their offices to their homes, they’ve realised the need to create a space for themselves in what was often an already crowded house. This need has sparked a movement towards telecommuting from untraditional parts of the home such as the garden shed.

The garden shed can serve as a way for the telecommuting employee to maintain better boundaries between work and home because it’s a separate space away from the rest of the house. It can also be a way to set up an office space that is functional and yet peaceful. One of the greatest benefits of telecommuting is that it reduces car pollution caused by commutes and allows for a greener earth. People who engage in shedworking (the official name for converting garden sheds into office spaces) celebrate that greening of the earth by actually working in places where nature can thrive around them.

Here are twenty of the best examples of garden shed offices being used by people around the world today.

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Microsoft Word is the most commonly-used word processing program on the market. Almost all people who own a computer make the investment to purchase a version of Word so that they can type up their documents and share them with others. The use of this word processing program is practically ubiquitous, a situation which has its pros and cons.

On the positive side, everyone is familiar with Microsoft Word. That means that it’s easy to share files between different groups of people because everyone in the group can probably open and edit a Word document. Additionally, there is very little training required when working with new people on a team in terms of the use of Microsoft Word. Whereas new employees may need to be trained on company-specific software, even the first-day employee can handle basic tasks on Microsoft Word because it’s a program that he or she has used before.

Unfortunately, there are also drawbacks to the prevalence of Microsoft Word as the major word processing program that everyone uses. The main drawback is that there are some things that Word just doesn’t do well. These things don’t need to be fixed because there’s no ‘real’ competition in the market for this word processing program. Or at least, there hasn’t traditionally been much competition.

However, individuals and businesses are tiring of having to rely on Word. They don’t want to be limited to only this program and the features that it has. Additionally, many people don’t want to have to pay the price to get Microsoft Word; better competition in the word processing market means lower prices for consumers. As a result, we have started to se the proliferation of numerous alternatives to Microsoft Word. Below you’ll find a review of a significant number of different Microsoft Word alternatives which can be used with various operating systems.

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Anyone who’s ever browsed the Internet at all (and who hasn’t!), chances are they’ve come across situations where you had to view a PDF file. PDF is the most widely used format for things such as online brochures, ebooks, and other online literature. Probably the most popular software out there for viewing, editing, and manipulating PDF files is the Adobe Acrobat Suite of software. For people who don’t know any better, Acrobat is their first choice when choosing software for all of their PDF needs. While Acrobat has proven to be a sufficient choice for any kind of PDF needs, there are plenty of drawbacks to this software that people need to know about, and there are plenty of good alternatives.

For starters, if you do any kind of research about Acrobat on the Internet, you’ll find people complaining of slow performance. While Adobe claims that their latest versions are up to 50% faster than previous versions, it can still take a substantial amount of time to load larger ebooks in PDF format using Acrobat’s Adobe Reader 8. The long load times are just one of the issues that people complain about. Another issue with Acrobat is its price. The newest version of Acrobat costs anywhere from £150 on up to £350 for their 3D PDF software. There are plenty of cheaper alternatives out there – many of which are completely free. Other common complaints associated with Adobe Acrobat include: frequent browser crashing when opening PDFs in a web browser, computer freezes, Acrobat uses too much computer memory, and updates are way too frequent and annoying.

So now that you’re ready to see some Adobe Acrobat alternatives, we’ll take a look at some software for all three of the major operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux) that can be used as a better, cheaper, and/or faster alternative to Acrobat. Keep in mind that some of these applications may only be PDF readers, or they may only be used for converting PDF files to Word files or vice versa. In other words, you may have to use 2 or 3 of these applications to equal the functionality of the Adobe Acrobat suite.

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Spam is not the word we wish to here anytime. The word is quite common and at the same time, sends shivers among many. On an average, most people get ten times more spam mail than the actual intended e-mail itself. Forget spam mail for now, there is a new research info coming in that shows vulnerabilities on web browsers that could be exploited to spam your printer.

An independent security researcher, Aaron Weaver has demonstrated that a particular technology – Cross Site Printing, could be used to spam your printer i.e send unwanted print jobs to your printer.

Cross Site Printing is a hacking technology that hackers use to inject malicious code onto webpages on the internet. When people browse such pages, a javascript code is sent to the user’s computer which initiates a print command automatically. The malicious code can send commands ranging from printing out pages to any other logical command like deleting certain files or ftping files.

The hack works on Internet Explorer and on Mozilla Firefox as well. But, as for as printer spamming goes, only network printers could be spammed and not the ones connected to PCs.

As most of us have observed, there is a default READY message displayed on all HP laser printers. Yaakov has managed to hack into the HP system and change the message as desired. He came up with a brilliant INSERT COIN message to replace the boring READY message.

Yaakov writes – “Well, of course I couldn’t ignore such an opportunity, and it turns out to be a lot of fun. You can think up your own funny, confusing or scary messages. My personal favorite is “INSERT COIN” which fits perfectly on the small LCDs. You can even sit in sight of the printer and change the message while watching the reaction of your victim. Don’t be surprised, though, if a large fraction don’t even notice. I was quite surprised myself but, it appears, some people don’t look at what is in front of them.”

The hack has been written using Perl language. The hack needs to be implemented by telnetting onto the printer using port 9100 and the following needs to be executed:

\e%-12345X\@PJL JOB
\@PJL RDYMSG DISPLAY=”INSERT COIN”
\@PJL EOJ
\e%-12345X

INSERT COIN in the code provided above can be replaced with any other message. But, do realise that special characters and longer sentences may not be displayed on the printer’s LCD due to the printer’s limitations.

I would like to see if users would actually try to find a slot to insert a coin after reading the message. I won’t be surprised if they actually do it.

HP Deskjet 1220C is an excellent photo printer and produces amazing graphics on paper. It is a big hit among many home printer owners today. But, there seems to be a perennial problem of cartridge blocks faced with this printer when used sparingly.

When I play computer and video games, one of the things that I do often is use cheat codes. What is the fun of playing against a computer when he knows all the tricks and you don’t? Anyways, I have always liked the idea that software programs, games and gadgets have a secret which is not usually revealed by the manufacturer in the product manual. HP 1220C has a three tiered secret procedure to clean and unblock ink cartridges.

Tier 1 Cartridge Cleaning: Light

1. Hold down the power button and press Cancel button twice
2. Release the power button
3. Check the print-out by running the Nozzle Pattern Diagnostic Test

Tier 2 Cartridge Cleaning: Intermediate

1. Hold down the power button and press Cancel button twice followed by Resume button once
2. Release the power button
3. Check the print-out by running the Nozzle Pattern Diagnostic Test
4. Use this step only if it is absolutely necessary. It reduces ink cartridge life.

Tier 3 Cartridge Cleaning: Intensive

1. Hold down the power button and press Cancel button twice followed by Resume button twice
2. Release the power button
3. Check the print-out by running the Nozzle Pattern Diagnostic Test
4. If there are gaps in the prints, replace ink cartridge

Every single printer manufactured has a diagnostic tool like the one mentioned above. The challenge is to find the one for your printer. My job would be to research and find out more diagnostic tools to be presented to our ever growing reader community.

It’s always interesting to learn about secrets; be it friends or companies or worse, printers. During my general browsing, I stumbled upon a website which had HP secrets revealed by an ex-employee. These secrets are quite interesting and everybody can learn a thing or two by knowing the HP mysteries.

Here are some of the secrets with my comments:

1. Many HP printers have a built-in page counter. After certain count, they stop working – HP provides a printing age to the printer and they feel that after certain prints, the printer is good to go. There are hacks to reset the count.
2. To get past the voice prompt system, repeatedly say “Agent.” – If you are calling HP customer rep, repeating the word “Agent” will surely get you a human to speak to you.
3. HP cartridges have a warranty separate from their printer – If the HP printer warranty has expired, you still can claim for cartridges as they carry a separate one.
4. Any HP printer that has been on the market for 6 months has its tech support outsourced – If you start hearing a foreign accent, probably the printer has been in the market for over six months. Older HP printers are no longer dear to the company; but, who says outsourced CSRs are no good.
5. Using non-HP cartridges in your printer will void your warranty – Customer reps are advised to hang up the call if they find that the user is using third party cartridges.
6. If you threaten a lawsuit, HP CSRs are told to stop the call immediately and hang up – There is a different route for lawsuits. Try contacting the corporate office for such cases.

Next time I call HP, I will keep some of these things on my mind. There are many more on this website which had originally published this article. These secrets are interesting and I hope to find more about other printers. Let’s have some fun while we print.