Ink Cartridges are strange things, innocuous vessels of a substance that seems so common and disposable – on every daily newspaper, on every flyer stuck to your car windscreen, even on those little sachets of silica gel you find in every box of new Nikes. Yet, if we want to buy ink for use in our own homes we seem to pay well over the odds. Today, a gallon of the stuff would set you back nearly £3000, and the outraged consumer is no longer standing idly by. In 2003 640,000 members of The Dutch Consumer Association started a month-long boycott of Epson Inkjet printers, whilst The Office of Fair Trading has also carried out its own investigation into the cost of ink cartridges. The OFT found three main problems with the printer market: 1. Consumers are unaware of the future costs of cartridges when they buy their printers, 2. There is no standard test to show how many pages should be printed by which cartridges, 3. Printer warranty information is unclear. The OFT investigation led t

The Eee - strange name, isn't it? White, roughly tablet sized, and inclined to make a person feel a tad loved up (towards it, at least, if not towards everyone else)... actually, I think I can see why Asus called it that now. Or perhaps there's supposed to be an unspoken "ba gum!" at the end of it? After all, you could easily be forgiven for uttering such a thing after a quick play with this impressive little gadget - I certainly did, and I'm not even from Yorkshire. But what exactly am I talking about, some of you will be wondering (unless you clicked the link)? And those who already know will probably be wondering why I'm going on about something that's such old news. Well, the other week was the first time that I, at long last, got my hands on one. It was love at first sight. Well, for me anyway; the Eee, on the other hand, remained quietly coy. Like anyone else with half an interest in a laptop I've been reading about the Eee's sensibly priced, pocket sized loveliness for mo

Up until about 10 years or so, most offices didn’t utilize scanners. If someone wanted to send an important document to his boss or to another employee in another branch, that employee would fax a copy of the document.

When looking for an electronics enclosure system, there are a number of qualities that one should consider. Look for a company that serves a diverse customer base, both domestic and international. Make sure the enclosure and console systems are used in a wide variety of applications, such as test and measurement, information technology, POS (point of sale), security, telecom, datacom, military, industrial process control, network operations, call centers, and trading rooms. A company that works closely with customers from the beginning to the end of the sale shows the dedication of that company. Through planning, designing, manufacturing, and installing, one should be able to see that the customer’s needs come first. A team of knowledgeable experts should be on hand to help find the perfect enclosure solution for the customer’s specific requirements. There are a number of services that a company can provide in order to show its customers that it really does care about them and th

Time and attendance and clocking systems have moved on over the last few years from traditional punch clock cards to the latest biometric technology. This might seem a bit extreme but companies loose millions on people being late, leaving early and what is known as ‘buddy clocking’ people clocking for other people. Biometric access control is growing quickly large organisation such as banks, airports etc tend to set the trend with this type of technology and I am sure if you go into any of these you will find some kind of biometric scanner whether it is clocking or access control or simply to log computers on/off. What’s wrong with swipe cards or pin numbers you might ask, these can be copied or obtained covertly where as a biometric scan is a lot harder to copy in fact almost impossible. When people hear biometric they instantly think of fingerprint technology but this is only one of several biometric systems. Fingerprint is the most common and least expensive to implement in to a

The Universal Serial Bus port, or USB, was seminal in standardizing computer interfaces. Previously, separate ports, generally serial ports, were individualized according to the type of device that required connection to the main computer terminal. With the invention of the USB port, greater versatility and interoperability was achieved that allowed the average computer-user far greater ease with which to connect external devices. The USB cable was even more convenient for the fact that it does not require that the computer be rebooted before use. Perhaps the most visible change created by the introduction of the USB cable is the proliferation of USB flash drives, or compact, external memory devices. These devices are quickly replacing the need for traditional hard drives and their prices have continued to fall since their introduction into the marketplace. These drives are not only useful for users, then, but are also more cost-effective to produce. They have a 200 million-hour mean

As I write this, a CD is playing in the background. A sampled heartbeat gives way to clatters and skitters of drums; impossibly fragile cymbals begin to shimmer; a hip-hop beat kicks in; all the time a looped melody is gradually asserting itself, morphing, mutating, multiplying, dissolving, chiming; an assortment of new rhythms start to twist in and out of each other, snaking around the main beat, entwining… Well, you get the picture. But here's the point I'm making: there's more going on in this first couple of minutes of Four Tet's masterpiece Rounds than on some entire albums. The time and painstaking precision that must have gone into sequencing it all so precisely, so beautifully, is simply amazing. All those hours Kieran Hebden must have spent hunched over his laptop… You can't imagine it sounding any other way. But more than that, if someone were to ask him to start over from scratch (though I don't know why anyone would), you'd be amazed if even he could produce that exac

I can handle most computer-orientated malfunctions. A weak wireless signal – well, move the thing closer. A humming sub-woofer – give it a kick. A leaky ink cartridge – the trick here is to get amongst it, and not to mind getting your hands dirty. Show ‘em who’s boss! And then be sure to throw your shirt into the washing machine and whack it up to 90 degrees. Just don’t expect to be able to fasten your top button afterwards – I heard somewhere that this isn’t so cool anyway. A similar good intention came back to haunt me however; and I learned a little something about playing the good Samaritan when it concerns an asthmatic ink-jet printer from 1994. Our relationship was pretty average – for a man and a printer. I remember our first meeting, unwrapping her from her corrugated box, relinquishing her from perpetual darkness and giving her the gift of being able to fulfil her purpose. Stripping her of that polystyrene comfort she had grown accustomed to and teaching her to obey

All the freezing stalling and humming is driving me crazy! Anyone who has ever tried to use a computer that is more than 10 years old and holds a history of school essays, old photographs, work documents, e-mail downloads and outdated and unused programmes will know what I am talking about. The rounded screen and its chunky house take up most of the desk and that’s without even including how much space the hard drive takes up under it! Neither of the CD drives work anymore and it is covered in stickers and smudges that won’t come off. I don’t want to set aside two hours to check my e-mails at home for god’s sake…I have paid for fast broadband! I believe that it is time to purchase another, newer computer. I don’t mean I want a new fancy pants spangled thing with tonnes of hard drive space. No, no, just a simple cheap computer so I can start my little digital world again without all this 90’s sluggery. As you can tell from my rant I have been putting this off for rather some time.

Is it me or are cartridges becoming exceedingly expensive these days? I mean I admit I use a lot of them, more than the average person indeed but with the amount I am spending I doubt that I am going to be able to carry on the way I am. Shooting has been a lifelong hobby for me and I would hate to have to curb it. The thrill of getting that perfect shot...a bird in flight or a moose whilst it forages in the forest for food. I like shooting people too don't get me wrong but there is just something about animals that really captures a beauty and innocence that is rare to find in human subjects. The kind of shooting I am talking about is not the kind that involves lots of blood and guts, only a good aim a steady hand and a reasonable camera. I was never really one for killing things, I always thought a pretty picture was far more worthwhile than a limp lump of fur and as my cooking is rubbish I have no idea what I would do with my catch anyway. I have pictures all over the house as a r