Just Computers

HP now offers the 17ml tanks for sale on their web site (but it does say, "Not all cartridges are available in all regions").

Canon has three sizes for all their inks now. For my old printer there was only one size: 13 ml for $20.

The price per ml doesn't really vary that much, except for HP's 8.0 ml tanks (expensive at $2.88/ml) and HP's 53 ml black tank (cheap at $0.80/ml). All of the other color inks for both Canon and HP run from $1.53/ml to $2.40/ml. Try not to think about the cost per gallon.

HP
Black
24.0 ml @ $31 = 1.3/ml
53.0 ml @ $42 = 0.8/ml
Colors
8.0 ml @ $23 = 2.875/ml
17 ml @ $33 = 1.94/ml


CANON
Black Pigment
11.2 ml @ $16 = 1.43/ml
18.5 ml @ $25 = 1.35/ml
25.7 ml @ $35 = 1.36/ml
Colors
5.6 ml @ $11 = 1.96/ml
8.3 ml @ $20 = 2.40/ml
11.7 ml @ $27 = 2.31/ml

Old Canon ip6700D
13ml @ $20 = 1.53/ml

Some time back in this thread, discussing a new BluRay player for the computer --

Howard wrote:

...got the BluRay playing just fine. Takes forever to load,...

Yaazah! I be an idiot! Just discovered that my anti-virus program scans every damned thing you plug into the computer - including DVDs. That's why it took it forever to load. I removed that function from the anti-virus program and the BluRay discs load almost immediately. Much, much better. Acceptable, even.

Wow.  Not something I would've guessed.

Finally got around to testing the photo printing of the new Canon. The old printer had six color tanks: Black, Yellow, Cyan, Magenta, Photo Cyan, and Photo Magenta. The new one has five color tanks: Black, Yellow, Cyan, Magenta, and Photo Blue. It also has a large black pigment tank for documents.

I printed a sheet on matte photo paper with nine pictures of varying colors, saturation, etc., and they look outstanding. I was surprised and delighted. Now, I'll need to try it on glossy photo paper and see how that looks. But so far, so good.

I also used the scanner on the new printer and was satisfied with the quality. But that was just some documents. I haven't tried scanning photos yet.

My scanner has —and yours may too — some editing options before you save the image, like cropping, saturation, brightness, sharpness.  Judicious use can actually IMPROVE some images.

I just looked at the scanner instructions. Yeah, it does a boat load of things. Sometimes, though, you have to decide if you want the scanner to do the conversions or you prefer using a photo editing program. The results could be very different.

But one thing it doesn't so is scan 35mm slides, as my old stand-alone scanner does.

The way I see it, the scanner in the printer is free, as I would have been just as happy to not have the scanner. The specs on the printer's scanner are not nearly as good as those on the old Epson scanner.

Stand-alone slide scanners are cheap (<$100). I bought one to do my sister's 5000+ slides.

I am not familiar with slide scanners, so I scrounged around and looked at the low-price scanners.
I wouldn't have any of them I looked at. The resolution is low (typically 1800 dpi). The scanner on the Canon printer is 2400 x 4800, while the Epson scanner is 4800 x 9600. And the Epson reads and saves the colors in 16 bits, while the Canon only saves colors in 8 bits.

Kudos to Adobe. Last time you'll hear that from me. But this is clever.

I just printed out some seven-page PDF files. Adobe printed the files in reverse order. so that they come out of the printer properly collated, with page one on top. Nice little move on Adobe's part.

All printers do that.

Have you explored double-sided printing yet? Some clever routines there, to make (for instance) CD booklets out of a bunch of JPGs.

NoCoPilot wrote:

All printers do that.

I don't believe you are right. The pages are ejected in the order they are printed, which I take to be the order in which the printer received them. It's entirely possible that the printer buffered the complete document and printed the pages in reverse, but I doubt it. And the printer does not do manual collating.

I will try the two-sided printing if I ever have a need for it.

Every printer I have ever owned, back to my very first Deskjet 500, had an option for printing "last first" on multipage documents.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Every printer I have ever owned, back to my very first Deskjet 500, had an option for printing "last first" on multipage documents.

This printer may have that option, but I have not run across it. I'll look for it.
Odd that there are so many options on newer devices for which I have had, to this time, absolutely no use.
By the way: I can guarantee that my 14-inch Epson dot matrix printer does not have this capability.


The Deskjet 500 came out in 1990. Make a guess at how many printers I had run through before that.

Was the "last page first" an option in the printer setup, or in the program from which you were printing?

The latter.

I had a dot-matrix printer, came with my Amstrad PCW -- but I don't consider it my first stand-alone printer.  I kept that DJ500 until way into the 2000s, as I've mentioned.  Built like a brick shithouse.  Still worked gangbusters when I retired it.

Wikipedia wrote:

In 1988, HP introduced the first DeskJet. It included a built-in cut sheet feeder, 2 ppm, and 300 dpi. This was followed by the DeskJet Plus in 1989. It offered a landscape printing ability. The DeskJet 500 was introduced in 1990, offering a faster printing speed of 3 ppm.

Shoot, you know I had a Plus before the 500. Maybe even a plain old DJ before that.

My first (and only) HP printer was a ThinkJet.

I don't remember what year I got the Amstrad. We've talked about it before. Was it 1986, or 1985? I know I'd been using mainframe dumb terminals since 1979.

When you try to find an intermittent networking problem while just a little bit stoned.

Hilarity ensues.

Department of Inexplicable Computer Problems, part 36.

My digital sound editing software has a tool called "repair" which redraws a waveform based on the 128 bits in front of, and the 128 bits after the 128 bits it'll redraw.  Very useful for removing a tick or pop which is in the middle of a soundwave (as opposed to in-between notes).

Last week -- for reasons inexplicable -- I suddenly started getting the error box you get when you highlight more than 128 bits to repair, but it started coming on at anything over 58 bits (not 64... which would be half normal).  Why?  No explanation.  Nothing had changed.  Not a major hardship -- most ticks are under 40 samples -- but odd and annoying.

This morning I got a OS upgrade, requiring a reboot, and now my repair is back to 128 bits.

This is the oddest symptom I think I've ever encountered.  The 128 bits has GOT to be hard-coded in the program.

That is an odd one, but I'm sure it's not connected to the upgrade.

Did you reboot the computer while you were having the problem? That is, was the problem there before and after a reboot?

Did you close and reopen the program, and did the error show up after the program reloaded?

Did you only notice the problem on one source file?

_Howard wrote:

That is an odd one, but I'm sure it's not connected to the upgrade.

Agree. More likely the reboot.

_Howard wrote:

Did you reboot the computer while you were having the problem? That is, was the problem there before and after a reboot?

Nope, didn't try.  I was (and still am) in the middle of some big projects and it wasn't that big a deal.

_Howard wrote:

Did you close and reopen the program, and did the error show up after the program reloaded?

See above.

_Howard wrote:

Did you only notice the problem on one source file?

Yes, it happened on several.

Rats. A program reload or a reboot might have pointed to the location of the error. It was some corrupt memory (unless there is a setting to use 58 bits and you accidentally engaged it). The question is whether the bad memory was in the program or in a dll (I assume Apple uses such things).

You'll have to forgive me - I cannot help but try to debug any program error I hear about.

I'm sure it was a memory handler or buffer which was holding onto something it needn't have. Not a big deal.

Just weird.

I've had Audacity installed on my computers for years, but all I have ever used it for is making clips.
Nice program, though. Even though their UI and documentation suck big time.