Multi-Talented

Today I bought a new printer. Both of my laser printers are about ready for retirement. I decided to go for a multifunction ink jet device, combining a printer and flat bed scanner. After looking at Lexmark and Epson devices, I settled on the cheap and compact HP PSC 1210 for $99. Take another $20 off thanks to a Staples coupon, and I ended up paying $79 plus tax.

HP claims the 1210 printer offers photo-quality 4800 x 1200 dpi color printing. Printing and copying speeds are up to 12 pages per minute in black, and up to 10 in color.

The photocopy features were a big selling point. I like the idea of being able to copy important documents (bills, receipts, etc.) without having to make a trip to Kinkos. Based on the few pages I’ve printed, color quality is good and speed is acceptable.

Multifunction printers are so cheap now, and come with such a variety of features, I can’t imagine the average computer user needing anything else.

Here’s a review I found.

Free Photo Editor

A co-worker asked me to recommend a Windows photo editing application that was cheap or free. My first thought was the GIMP, but she wanted something easy to learn. I told her about PhotoPlus 5.5 from Free Serif Software. PhotoPlus is freeware.

PhotoPlus is definitely easy to use, somewhat similar to Paint Shop Pro 7, which is my image editor of choice. Paint Shop is more powerful, but it costs around $100. PhotoPlus also seems to have a pertty good help system.

One problem I had with PhotoPlus is that I couldn’t figure out how to enter palette colors as hex (like #ffffff for white). This is a pretty important feature for creating images for the web, but not so much for photo editting.

If your camera, PC or scanner didn’t come with decent photo editing software, PhotoPlus is a good choice.

Need a computer?

Wal Mart is advertising a Compaq computer with some nice features for just $498, including a monitor. Here are the specs:

* Compaq CV7500 17″ CRT monitor (16.0″ viewable)
* AMD Athlon XP 2400+ processor (2.0 GHz)
* 40 GB Ultra DMA hard drive
* 128 MB DDR-SDRAM (up to 16 MB allocated to video memory)
* Integrated ProSavage DDR KM266 graphics
* HP CD-Writer (CD-RW) 32×10x40
* V.90 56K flex modem
* Integrated 10/100Base-T networking interface
* 3.5-inch (1.44 MB) floppy diskette drive
* Polk Audio stereo speakers with Power Port technology
* Keyboard
* 2-button PS/2 scroller mouse
* Available slots: 2 PCI and 1 AGP
* Available external ports: 6 USB 2.0 – 1 serial – 1 parallel
* Available bays: Internal – 3.5-inch (1)

I like that they give you the economical integrated video, and they also throw in an AGP slot to add a decent video card later (for demanding games).

The CD burner is a nice touch. This is pretty much a standard item on all new computers, as it should be.

One problem area that I see – Only 128 megs of ram. Windows XP is usable with this amount of memory, but noticably suffers. Especially if you want more than one application open. Compaq could have kept the floppy drive and bumped the memory up to 256 mb.

In fact, this pc is nearly identical under the hood to the HP computer I bought last winter (HP owns Compaq). My pc only had an Athlon XP 1800, though. I immediately added 256 mb of RAM to my pc (around $40 then, with a rebate), and it has been serving me and my family faithfully.

The deal is available in the store, or online here.

bBlog – new kid on the bBlock

bBlog is an open source, GPL’d blogging system written in PHP. Sounds very interesting. I just found it here, and I will be trying it out in the near future. Don’t get me wrong – MovableType is the greatest - I just like PHP and the GPL.

Anyone who has already tried bBlog, let me know what you think.

Don’t throw away last year’s PC

Although Michael Dell might disagree, a pc with a 1 ghz processor and 256 megabytes of RAM running Linux or Windows (98SE or newer) is more than enough computer for most common tasks. I’m talking Web browsing, email, word processing, personal finance, burning CDs, digital photography, and even light gaming – especially children’s games.

If you are playing EverQuest or some other high-end game, or if you are editing video files, then you would probably get your money’s worth out of a new high-end or mid-range PC. Otherwise, spending a few bucks on your “old” PC for more memory and maybe a bigger hard drive (all those mp3 files!) will keep your computing experience a pleasant one.

I would go into more detail, but Robert Bruce Thompson already has, for the O’Reilly Network. Read his article here.

By the way, my main computer is a 950 mhz Athlon with 512 mb of Ram. My second computer is an AMD Athlon 1800 XP (1.53 ghz, I believe). The laptop I use is a 366 mhz Pentium II with just 64 megs of RAM and a wireless card (used for email, web browsing and light word processing – it could definitely use more RAM). Adding all three together won’t get me 3 ghz, but I’m managing just fine, thanks.

Thunderbird Release 0.1

Mozilla Firebird is a free, open source email client in the early stages of development. I’ve been using it for a few weeks, and I like what I see so far. This week, the Thunderbird project has produced its first milestone release, version 0.1.

Although it is still early in the development process, Thunderbird seems like a stable, fast and usable email client on both Linux and Windows, with an appealing user interface. I’m sure it will only get better.

Click here for the Thunderbird home page.

I Need my Real Player

Real Player quit working in my Firebird browser on Linux Mandrake today. I’m sure I did something stupid to cause it, but I can’t remember what. When I clicked on a link to a “.ram” file, nothing happened. I tried re-copying the “rpnp.so” file into the plugin directory, but that didn’t help.

On a hunch, I created a new profile for Firebird, clicked a .ram link, and it let me select a program to open the RealPlayer file (I chose “RealPlay” in the RealPlayer8 installation folder). Real Player opened and everything worked just fine.

That was the clue I needed. I went into the “Default” profile folder for Firebird, and found a file called “mimeTypes.rdf”. I opened that xml file in KWrite and edited out what I thought was the problem entry.

No dice – still wouldn’t work. I could go on editing the file until it worked, but I had a better idea. I just copied the mimeTypes.rdf file from the new profile I had created to the Default profile folder. Bob’s your uncle. I now have the RealPlayer mime type working again.

I don’t think this problem was Linux specific, since Firebird (and Mozilla) is implemented pretty consistently from one platform to the next. That didn’t stop me from blaming Linux when RealPlayer broke, but I am now properly chagrined. There was probably an easier way to get this working again, but we will call my efforts “penance”.

Dangerous Windows Flaws

I am becoming more and more convinced that Windows is permanently and fundamentally flawed, and that it cannot be fixed. Read this if you don’t believe me.

Linux has plenty of rough edges, but at least it isn’t putting the national infrastructure at risk.

Window Maker

On my Mandrake Linux computer, I’ve been using the KDE and Gnome window managers – mostly KDE. Both are full-featured, polished environments, somewhat similar to the Windows gui.

In the mood for something different, I’ve been playing with Window Maker. Nice, but very alien to a former (and current) Windows user. Window Maker is fun to use and explore, but hard to get used to. Part of the fun of Linux is definitely the variety and configurability of the window managers.

Here is a shot of my Window Maker desktop (click to enlarge):

New PC Furniture

We keep a pc in our living room for the family to use. It’s an HP Pavillion with an Athlon 1800 xp processor, 384 mb RAM and a 40 gig hard drive. The whole thing, including cd burner and 17 inch monitor, was $499 + tax at Wal Mart last winter.

My wife, Theresa, just got done putting together a computer cart to replace the desk we were using. This tiny little cart will hopefully not attract clutter like the old desk, which is now hosting another pc in an out of the way ccorner of the house. The living room computer is now much less obtrusive.

The HP is connected wirelessly to my main computer and the Sprint DSL modem through a D-Link wireless router. This is the computer our kids use to access the internet, under adult supervision.