Month: March 2021

I won’t say I entirely agree with Joanna (of the Wall Street Journal who recommends an ink Tank printer), nor do I entirely disagree. The cost of cartridge inkjet printers over the life of the printer is artificially high (ink cost) and her math is spot on regarding what it costs for those who regularly print ( $1200 or more over the life of the printer if you print a few pages each and every day); but, my experience says there are a lot of consumers who print a few pages once or twice a month and leave the printer alone for the rest of the month.

For these people, the inkjet printer has always been expensive because the heads get dried ink on them and eventually have to be cleaned (burning through lots of ink) and eventually leading to the failure of one or more nozzles and forcing either an expensive repair or less expensive replacement of the printer. If you are one of these folks and you insist on having your own printer (to avoid the inconvenience of having printing done by a service and then picking it up), then consider an inexpensive laser printer. If you let it sit for a few months between printing sessions, you may want to take the toner cartridge out and shake it or gently rock it back and forth; but, it is highly likely to print just fine after a long time being ignored and the cost per page will quickly favor the laser for users who print sporadically.

Calculating the cost of any printer over the long haul (please restrict yourself to a 5-year expected life for a printer in today’s world) is a simple matter of figuring out how much paper you have been using and then using the manufacturer’s estimate (I know, but I have found these estimates to be close enough) for toner or tank life and doing some really simple math to determine which printer will be the most cost-effective for you. For instance, my wife and I buy 2 reams of paper most years for 1000 pages of printing a year, and our little laser printer (using the XL size toner) prints 3000 pages per $80 cartridge so I expect to buy one additional toner cartridge over the life of the printer to print roughly 5000 pages (5 years at 1000 pages per year). As a result, my $130 printer will cost $210 over that 5-year life to print 5000 pages.

Installation difficulty also factors in; if you have to hire a technician to set it up, you will need to factor in another $60-$125 for that service unless you can find a full-service retailer (who may charge slightly more for the printer) but include delivery and set up in the price. Here is where I put in my pitch for HP and Epson who both have superior installation routines that make it possible for most users to set up their own printer.

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal today that really has me upset. The journalist (writer) was tasked with identifying and elaborating on what could and should be done to improve the modern laptop for its role in remote office and meeting activities. The author suggested that the number one thing that needed to be done was to make us look better in the meeting (visually) and went on to describe daemons (running utilities) that make it look like we are excited by the content or engaged with the meeting even if we aren’t.

Sorry folks, but what a waste of effort. How about improved audio and video compression firmware to reduce the bandwidth required to carry on a meeting of a given quality? Or, perhaps, adding lighting to the edge of the display panel so the machine can automatically compensate for low lighting, glare, background elements, and so forth?

Other things I would like to see that are not available on the average laptop include larger (and yes heavier) batteries so you can run on battery power for 8 hours or more while operating meetings, searching videos, etc. A keyboard enhancement that allows you to change the “click” volume to suit your activity (silent while in a meeting to clearly audible for burning the midnight oil with your laptop), this might mean having a keyboard that is capable of being silent most of the time. An external indicator to inform the user if the Microphone and/or camera is actively transmitting or collecting audio and video (a common feature on external cameras but not the built-ins on most laptops).

I am sure that those of you who often use a laptop for virtual meetings and the like have some other features that would make that laptop a better tool for your home office. I know that my biggest current issue is that many people do not have enough bandwidth at home to comfortably carry out a meeting from home and honestly, many rural areas don’t have that kind of bandwidth available for any price. My experience is that most organizations have gone with Zoom (which has some real issues including being a bandwidth hog); but, the nature of meetings is that groups, organizations, and businesses needed to standardize and many chose products they had been using well before the pandemic impacted our activities.