Category: Gadgets

Reviews and tips about various gadgets.

Thumbs Down: Epson Stylus C84

The Epson Stylus C84 fails Walt’s review and gets a major thumbs down. It consumes ink way to fast, dies after 9 months, and Epson’s support is atrocious.

Purchased an Epson Stylus C84 printer a while back. On the up side, it works with XP and OS X. On the down side, it came with no USB cable. On the really down side, it sucks ink like crazy.

And in the this-printer-totally-sucks category, the ink clogs and there’s relatively little you can do about it, causing the printer to become a paperweight after about 9 months.

Which I had checked Google first, because this is a common problem.

Only one link provided any hope. Even then it wasn’t trivial.

What I did get out of my Google searching was a good laugh. Some do-it-yourselfer-dumbass went to clean his ink tube, and lacking the correct cleaning solution to pour in the tube, decided to try a can of compressed air instead. He makes a passing note that “you will get ink all over yourself.” Just the visual of when he pulled the trigger, coating his face in permanent black speckles, made me laugh so hard my sides hurt.

Walt gives the Epson Style C84 a thumbs down.

Mom Uses A Mac?

To undertand the significance of this post, you have to understand my parents. Dad has been using Windows for quite some time, and getting him to move from DOS to Windows to NT to XP has been a painful, painful, painful journey. For whatever reason, Windows could never survive under his watch — the machine would slow to a crawl, mysterious things would happen, meanwhile virus checks and spyware would show the system clean. Mom, meanwhile, had no interest in computers and would call me up to look up something for her and read it to her; attempts to put her in front of a machine didn’t go well at all.

A few days ago, dad announced he was done with Windows. He wanted a Mac, and so we sat down together and figured out what he needed and ordered him a nice mid-range Macbook Pro. The instructions, I thought, were fairly simple: when it arrives, don’t do anything with it until we get together and I can show you around.

Well, I’m writing this post because that didn’t happen. And the story doesn’t go in the direction you think it might. Without assistance, not so much as a call to me, he fires up the Mac and configures the operating system, without incident. Though he reports he “lost his Mac” — and where I took this to be some code that something went wrong, it turned out it was code that something went terribly right.

He showed my mother the laptop. Remember, she can’t use Windows to save her life. She’s near retirement age, which provides more context, and goes to bed around 7pm. Apparently she stayed up until 2am playing with it and surfing the web… something she’s never been able to do before.

In my mind, that says a lot. It says that Apple’s got it right. That a complete computerphobe can acclimate to be functional in less than an evening, and enjoy it.

Back to dad: clearly someone who’s never used a Mac before is going to encounter problems and confusion, especially if they have precanned expectations that things ought to work like Windows. My intent is to catalog his issues, and the solutions, so that others making the switch will have some help from someone who’s been in the same shoes.

Look for a link here in coming days.

Panasonic DVD-S35 Is Awful

If you recently got a Panasonic DVD-S35, return it. It only lasts for 2 years at the most, then you get H02 and H07 error messages. The fix is simple: buy a new unit from another name brand.

I used to own an old Panasonic DVD player, it was awesome, built like a fortress, and had nothing but spectacular performance. So, when “new” DVDs came out that were packed with more dense data that it couldn’t play, I decided to upgrade to the Panasonic DVD-S35.

It was one of the worse home theater decisions I’ve ever made in my life.

The model wasn’t cheap either. The box claimed it was loaded with features. But everything from the terrible design of the remote, to the terrible interface for skipping around and fast forwarding, down to the inability to still play some discs made me regret the decision thoughout the lifespan of the product.

Only thing was, I didn’t realize just how bloody short that life span was going to be. Less than 2 years.

Mind you, most computer-related devices will run continuously for well over a decade. You know this to be true because that old personal computer you have shoved the back of the closet still works if you plug it in — that’s why you haven’t thrown it out. You had problems parting with your television, and moved that upstairs. Your old stereo, you regifted to a friend when you stepped up to surround sound. And DVD players are no different, except for this one that comes out of the box nearly DOA.

About 6-8 months in, the device started freezing on movies. We thought this was dirt and dust on the disc, but the disc was always clean. Reinserting it, ejecting the disc, or power cycling the player always seemed to fix it.

Until today.

Today the unit won’t play any disc we put into it, reporting an H02 error. A little research online showed that meant the spindle was no longer turning, so it couldn’t read the index, so it couldn’t tell a disc was in the unit.

The solution was simple. Take the cover off, get a surprise at how little there is inside, wonder why they made the box so large and empty, and wiggle the white spindle with your finger. Magically, it would free up and start working again.

We plugged it in, and it recognized the first disc we put into it and it started to play! Until about 30 seconds in, when we got an error H07.

Enough is enough. The Panasonic DVD-S35 is enough to ruin your faith and trust in the Panasonic brand name. Everyone is having this problem.

More Apple Laptops

This weekend was fun — ended up picking up TWO MORE laptops for friends.

This last weekend had a root canal, and my friend Marcus came over to check up on me to see how I was doing. The pain killers had kicked in, so I was up for an adventure.

What did Marcus want to do? Buy an Apple MacBook Pro, just like mine; he had played with mine, saw all the neat features, and loved the fact that it really could run XP at the same time (in addition to other operating systems, too!).

Now, in theory, the Apple Store and the online Apple Store are supposed to be the same for pricing. And, well, they are. Sorta.

The online store is far more up to date with the newest inventory.

There’s a hidden implication in that statement — and that is that the physical Apple store has left over inventory, so sometimes you can get a better deal, just by asking.

As it was, we were looking for the latest 15″ MacBook Pro with the faster processor, larger video memory, larger hard drive, and single 1GB memory stick instead of two.

But just as the physical Apple store has extra inventory, they don’t have the capability to configure the machine exactly as you want it. And there was the problem; the models the store physically sold were configured differently than the options we’d carefully crafted online.

Marcus decided to go with the “lesser” laptop that was identical to mine.

The guy ran to the back, and came back with the laptop and then made the announcement that the store was doing a silent upgrade. The models that they had in stock were larger processor, larger video card, larger disk space, and single stick memory — all at the cost of the lower end model!

The sales guy confessed that this happens all the time. If they don’t have enough low end machines, you pay for the low end machine, and they give you a high end machine. So, it’s always best to check a physical store first — you may get a better deal!

Speaking of deals; while there, the Apple store gave us a free photo printer for buying the machine.

We went back to my place, added all the OS X extras that come with the system, downloaded all the free goodies online — and Marcus was up and running in roughly about 2 hours. That’s a full system install from scratch, fully networked, and with a ton of applications and extensions. Including the ability to install his XP disc when he got home.

The next day I get a call from Marcus. Nothing was wrong. His sister had seen his laptop, fallen in love with it, and she wanted to get one too — only decked out with everything, including the 17″ display.

We went out to eat — and found free Wi-Fi. We came back home and connected the machines together in a little network; it was trivial.

There’s something highly infectus about the new laptops that makes a PC person want one after playing with it.

In assorted news, my nephew turned 4, and for his birthday party I brought over the laptop to let him take some Photobooth pictures. What was surprising was that he just sat down and started using the Mac with no instruction other than wanting to know where the button to “click the mouse” was since he had never seen a touch pad. He opened a number of apps and started playing movies. –At the age of four, having never seen a Mac before.–

UPDATE: Have to quote Marcus, who sent me an email…

Software? Missing? HAHA…um, you saw how sparse my software was on my XP box upstairs. I can already do more than I was ever able to do with my XP machine. Oh! Oh! Oh! AND!!! I haven’t had to put in but 1 liscense key…gotta love that! I don’t feel like I’m criminal for using software I own now.

I Hate Laptops, and Apple Changed That

Just got a MacBook Pro, and I think it’s going to change my life.

Let me start off by saying, I hate laptops. A lot. I despise the cost. I hate the small keyboard. I loath the tiny screens. I can never get the mouse touch pad to work. The processors are slow. The memory is cramped. The drive space is too small. Devices don’t work with them. The graphics drivers have problems. The battery life is limited. They’re fragile. They are uncomfortable. They get too hot. And you end up needing a whole docking station, external screen, external keyboard, and external mouse just to use one. Plus, the way machines advance these days, I couldn’t envision myself having to commit to that upgrade path.

So, when I wanted to do remote computing, have a portable working environment, and be able to give presentations, I scoffed at my wife’s suggestion of getting a laptop. She darn near twisted my arm and enlisted the help of a few friends to eventually convinced me just to reconsider and be open to the idea.

As I write this while sitting on my sofa in our family room using my new MacBook Pro, I have to say that every single one of my fears and concerns has totally been mitigated or removed by Apple. Every. Single. One.

That brings the official count of Mac machines over the machines running XP for me personally.

I justified the purpose by saying I’d at least have an Intel machine, so I could try the new applications. I had to convince myself that a laptop was going to be primarily for portablity and that it was just simply going to lack the power of a desktop. Whoa, was I wrong. What’s even more surprising was that when I opened up the box, I saw what I thought was a free Mini iPod thrown in. It wasn’t. It was a remote control.

“Remote control?” I thought to myself, “What is this? A marketing joke? Why would I need a remote control for a computer?” I pressed Menu on the remote, and my jaw hit the floor.

The OS X operating system’s desktop recessed back into the screen, with reflections, and became shadowed. Spinning icons swept in showing me all the media applications. Pressing the direction buttons on the remote, selected different applications, and pressing select started the application in kind of a multi-media mode. It was breath taking. I had never seen this before, and it floored me. If you’re running Windows, there’s nothing to compare it to. Apple had thought this though amazingly well.

What you are about to see is a live, uncut
screen capture, not an edited movie!

[QUICKTIME http://www.wwco.com/~wls/livejournal/RemoteControl.m4v 320 240]

I simply can not believe how comfortable it is to recline, sit back and type with ease, and be able to see in perfect clarity the project I’m working on. Given that I can now take my computing environment with me, this is going to totally change the way I approach computing. Apple is changing my life the way that TiVo did, allowing me to do more in less time with higher quality where and when I want.

Jumping Optical Mouse: This Is Gross

How to fix the most common problem with optical mice — warning: it’s gross.

It seems that there are a large number of people experiencing problems with optical mice erratically jumping to a new position on the screen.

In the most common case, this is simply a matter of the table surface being oddly patterned or textured.  You know this is the problem when the mouse just goes in the wrong direction for no good reason.

In the least common case, there’s actually a hardware problem, and you can often get the vendor to replace it.  This exhibits itself as the slightest touches sending the mouse pointer rocketing to one of the screen corners.

But there’s a fairly common problem that most people have over looked, and it’s friggin’ gross, but knowing about it fixes the problem in most cases.  I put this tech solution in the “Everybody Poops” bin. You know you have it when your optical mouse works fine most of the time, and for no apparent reason will make a short hop to a new location near by the old mouse cursor position.
Perhaps you’ve heard of keyboard plaque, that nasty cruft that collects on keyboards?  Well, part of the reason we’re all using optical mice is because a wheel mouse picks up dirt and dust off the table and it eventually gets wrapped around the internal rollers, meaning you have to take the wheel out and pick the crud off.  But with optical mice, that shouldn’t be a problem… right?

Problem is our hands sweat as we use a mouse.  Natural oils and preperation rub off on the table.  This can make small sticky areas for dirt and dust.  Dead skin comes off too, which some estimates say is what 90% of indoor dust really is.   This builds up as an area of concentrated table plaque.

If you look real carefully and up close at the area where your mouse sits on the table, you’ll see it is covered with little dark grey specs.  And long before you notice these, your optical mouse has to dance over them.  Unchecked, they’ll get quite visible and even flake off.
Who knows what the mouse optics see, but the texture and reflectivity radically change for an instant, and your optical mouse will jump on the screen trying to compensate for the motion it incorrectly perceived.

The solution is simple, borrow a credit card, cause you most likely won’t want to use your own, and scrap the table surface with its edge.  You’ll notice stuff coming up easily, and a hint here: it’s not the finish.  In moment’s you’ll have a clean surface, and surprisingly your mouse will start working again.

Apple’s ProCare: First Look

After shelling out $99 on Apple’s ProCare, here’s what it was like.

Apple has a pretty sweet deal going that they haven’t made much of a fuss about.  It’s called Apple ProCare, and for $99 you get a magic number on a pretty cool looking translucent credit card-like piece of plastic.  This gets you six things:

  1. Personal one on one training for a subject of your choosing with an Apple Expert, usable once a week for 52 weeks.
  2. Up to seven day advanced registration for free tech support at the Apple Genuis Bar.
  3. Complete setup, assuming you buy a new Mac — they’ll configure it for you, including migrating your files.
  4. Priority machine repair with same-day service when possible, technical questions answered with priority.
  5. A yearly tune up to keep your machine running smoothly, including physical cleaning of your equipment.
  6. This level of treatment in any Apple store anywhere in the world.

From these services, it’s fairly easy to see they have two types of target audience.

The first is the highly inexperienced person who needs help connecting their iPod, uploading pictures from a camera, or wants to make a web page.  We call this the “I can’t get my email” type person.  This person asks their one or two questions and is never seen from again — sheer profit.
The second is the highly experienced person who’s looking for some really specialized information for some application.  We call this the “I can’t get my professional video loading into DVD Studio Pro using the H.264 codec when compressed by Quicktime Pro and MP4 produced by Final Cut Pro HD won’t work since I’m getting visual artifacting with the default configuration, so I need to figure out whether it’s the audio data channel, the frame rate, or the image dimensions which cause the rejection, since H.264 is listed among the available import media types…” kind of person.  This person taps the knowledge of the creative expert, so the goal by Apple is to educate them about new products, train them to use them, and hope for a sale.  In short, it’s one on one advertising.

I fall into this second group.

Now the way the whole thing goes down is that you get onto Apple’s site, register using your special number, and get an appointment at the Genius Bar for a given time.  My wife, meanwhile was going to sit in on an Apple demonstration show.

The reality went more like this:  I showed up at the right time, but my name was never called, nor was I listed, and in fact, people walking in the store were jumping in front of me.   The demonstration show was canceled earlier that day.

Turns out this was for good reason, as those folks were sick.  Consequently, we had to track someone down, and they looked me up, and hooked me up with an expert immediately.  That person, who was very nice, made it clear that he was not a Final Cut Pro expert, but a Motion expert.  This explained what was about to happen.

I brought in a demo CD of my problem, demonstrated it, and within the first two minutes had totally stumped him.  It was clear that their basic training shows how to use the software in the most generic sense.  The why behind the way things acting the way they do are not taught.  However, if you get the right creative consultant, this person may have a passion about a given application and know a lot of really useful things.

The majority of my  Final Cut Pro questions were not answered, or at least not to my liking, or even worse I knew better and could tell when I was being B.S.’d by someone who didn’t want to admit they didn’t know the answer.  As such, I’d say the quality was poor.  And, when he knew I wasn’t getting the answers I wanted, he did manage to track someone else down to help.  Bonus points there, chap.
But, when we flipped over to the application that the person did know, in this case Motion, he was able to show me all kinds of amazing tricks and techniques, and even extended our meeting time beyond the one hour time block.  As such, I’d say the quality of that consulting was beyond excellent.

All in all, I have to say that I most likely had the worst possible experience that is capable of coming out of Apple: a late start and the wrong expert for the topic.  Even still, the experience was a very positive one!  So, I can only imagine what what getting the right person would be like.

My intent is to go again next week, bounce some of the same questions off the right expert (assuming she’s well), and see what answers I get.  All I know is that after one hour with an Apple consultant, I’m now far more proficient than I was before.

Apple, you’ve done well.

Alienware Laptop Issues

I have a friend named Marcus who’s a fantastic system admin for Windows systems.

He’s very much into gaming and purchased an Alienware laptop. These are supposed to be top of the line machines that are also aesthetically beautiful, too.

However, he’s had nothing but problems with it. Most of them related with overheating, including the fact it caught fire.  And while his extended warranty was in place, it’s spent more time in the shop than playing games.  And when it was playing games, they crashed and blue screens.

Being a Windows expert who handles hundreds of systems and corporately manages the master images for companies, he got frustrated enough to dig under the hood …and he found some surprising results.

As he was recounting them over dinner, I mentioned that he really ought to document them in a blog somewhere for the universe to benefit from.  This morning he sent me an email with many of the details, of which I’ll paraphrase:

The source of is reliability errors came from the fact that DirectX was malfunctioning.  He found a log file stating that Alienware had installed the Japanese version on his machine.  This explains why updates were so slow, they weren’t going to US based servers!  He also discovered, thank you Microsoft, that you can’t uninstall this feature.

Using the same machine he wiped the hard drive, installed his own copy of the operating system and software, using nothing provided by Alienware.  The machine worked perfectly.  Or, well, it did until he discovered the machine would reboot just by selecting another display resolution.  Apparently if the external screen’s resolution was set higher than the built in LCD, it would crash.  Thus, it would work, but just in a lower resolution. However a few hours later it shut off and just went dead.

Using Google, Marcus discovered that David P. Meyer is starting a class action lawsuit against Alienware Notebook Systems starting at $260 million.  With a handful of repair orders and original receipts, Marcus is joining in, as anyone who’s had to take their machine to the shop, even ones, is eligible for a complete refund.

Wacom, Whooops!

A long while ago I had a Wacom tablet that used a serial port to communicate to the computer. These days, finding a serial port is getting hard and finding a serial device driver is even harder. USB with its speedy communication speeds and standard interface provides so many benefits there’s no reason to keep dated hardware around. This was a shame, as my old Wacom is still in perfect working order — I just can’t use it on modern machines.

To solve this problem, I purchased a cheap tablet clone from the Computer Show months later. It worked well enough. However, the moment a new version of the OS rolled out, I found it stopped working. Nice.

So, for the longest while, I just did without.

That was until this last year when I had a number of artistic projects that could have benefited from a tablet, not to mention the cartooning business was picking up.

Talking with the wife, we decided it was time to invest in another tablet. And Jerry Carr convinced me I should really stick with the Wacom brand. Aside from having more features, high quality, great warranty, and good software, the chances of being hardware stranded again was risk acceptably low.

So, given that you now understand my past history with tablets, you can understand why I was willing to go all out for a final tablet. I never wanted to have to buy any more. So, when it came to which model, the answer was clear: the latest and greatest. When it came to which size, the answer was also clear: the biggest they got.

That’s how this kind of thing happens:

I seemed to have grossly under-estimated the fact that a 12″x19″ sized tablet would have a frame around it. It’s larger than my keyboard, larger than my screen, larger than my desktop space, and quite literally larger than me.

The thing comes with a dual ended pen, five spare tips of various textures, a five button wheel mouse, a driver disk (that needed OS X driver updates), and bundled software with coupons for cheap upgrades.

iPod: I Get It Now

In a previous bog entry, I mentioned I might be tempted into getting a video iPod… well, I went down that slippery slope and got a happy surprise.

Previously, I mentioned that I might be getting a video iPod. Well, I went to the Apple store to pick up the latest copy of iLife (photography manager, movie creator, dvd creator, music creator, and web page creator tools) iWork (better-than-PowerPoint presenter and Page Layout for making books, magazines, news letters, and so on). While there, I broke down and got a Video iPod to see what all the fuss was about.

My initial thought at the store was “my, what small packaging you have.” My initial thought at home was “my, what small software you have.” My initial thought after plugging it into the computer was “my, what amazing features you have!” Why didn’t I make this purchase sooner?

See, I already have an MP3 player. It was one of the very first to come out. It’s the Nomad Jukebox (model DAP6GO1) by Creative. I got it at CES a number of years ago when this was cutting edge technology. It’s got all kinds of whacky sound processing features and exotic menus that eventually were deemed fairly advanced for the average music listener who’s on the go. And, given that I didn’t use it all that much, why get another? Originally, I got it for the PC, but I was surprised to see it’s still supported and apparently integrates with iTunes natively.

One of the fundamental problems I have with Apple is that they don’t flaunt all their features, you get them as surprising extras. This is certainly the case with OS X, where it looks at first glance that they do only 4 major things, though on closer inspection, you see it’s really more like over 200 new features. The iPod did the same thing.

My impression, from just marketing, was that it plays MP3s and videos you download from iTunes on a very small screen, and once stuff is on the iPod, you can’t move it back. Podcasting? That’s just downloading a file. Big whoop. I was wrong – I didn’t get it.

The iPod has an enormous amount of room in it, 60GB, more than enough to hold the majority of most DJ’s music collections, though my own collection pales in comparison. When the iPod was beaming over my music, and quite quickly I might add, it also moved over 6000 photo graphs. It also copied over my contact list from my address book. It captured my calendars. Everything I usually try to keep sychronized with my PDA and Sidekick. Not to mention, it gave me a file system where I could store files and take them with me as easy as a USB flash drive.

The integration with iTunes was beyond seamless, I was even able to take Uncle Danny videos and make them look awesome on the iPod. That screen that I thought was too small turns out to be sharp and very high quality, and looks the perfect size while holding the device. Using HandBrake and iSquint, it’s possible to get anything onto the iPod. Using JHymn, it’s possible to get anything off again.

While listening to some music, which magically used the same organization schemes I use in iTunes, I was pleased to learn I could visit other functions of the iPod without interrupting the music. Walking through those 6000 photos was a snap, they flew by as fast as I could run my finger around the ring. In slideshow mode, the transitions were as professional and as beautiful as those found in KeyNote.

The iPod had a clock that was sychronized to my system, had an area for notes, a stop watch, screen lock, and games. The games were your standard break out, solitare, shoot the falling object, and a music trivia quiz where you had to guess the right song based on selections from your own library.

What I really liked the most, oddly enough, was the pod casting. The very feature I was dismissive about. I found a PhotoshopTV pod cast of tricks and tips and have gotten hooked. It works like this: anyone produces their own radio or television show, informs iTunes about it, then iTunes acts as the distribution media for it. From my perspective, it acts like TiVo for iPods. Things that I like, and therefore subscribe to, are pulled down and stuck in my iPod for me each time I connect it to recharge. Stuff I watch goes away. So, without having to do much of anything, my iPod acts as a portable entertainment center.

And, while I was at the Apple Store in Tysons, I also picked up the iPod AV Cables, which let you use the headphone jack to send stereo audio and video to your television, meaning I don’t even need a computer to watch stuff on the big screen. And, unlike my Nomad which is the size of portable CD player, the Video iPod is exactly 15 credit cards heigh.