Computer monitor problem

[clare]

12 volt power output? It's junk anyway - cut the wire off the PS and connect it to a 12 volt battery and see if the monitor works. Be careful of the polarity. If it works, buy a new brick.

[clare]

If you are standing on your head - - -

[bob_villain]

I liked W2K, to me it made XP unnecessary. I haven't had much experience with Lenovo to judge...but my new and used Dells have been excellent. I can't say the say for the HP's I've run into!

[songbird]

[e-mail] wrote: ...

right after you do this next time get a partition image saved to a USB. makes the next round as easy as a partition restore. much easier than redoing all the install/settings.

songbird

[clare]

I virtually never have to reinstall XP.Not WIndows & either. Not with service pack 2 installed (on xp - SP 1 on 7), anyway.

I runClean My PC registry cleaner from registry-cleaner.net. I have the paid version, but even the free version does wonders for a slow XP machine.

There are other "registry-cleaners" out there that STINK. This one works. IOBit's Advanced SystemCare does a good job too.

IBM / Lenovo is about as good as you can get. Unlike the Dell from Hell. I have good luck with the higher end Acers too.

[bob_villain]

Stick with automotive repair...it seems you know that...most all PC experts/professions say reg cleaners are "snake oil"!

[Don Y]

Some of their enterprise class machines are respectable.

I dumped the last of my pen plotters in favor of a large format printer-plotter... keeping the pens from drying out (with the infrequent use that I have) was more trouble than it was worth!

[Though watching it plot was almost "therapeutic"!]

But, the consumer stuff is largely disposable. And, printers are just "ink selling tools".

[Anyone with a color inkjet should seriously consider finding a local service bureau for your color printing -- Kinkos, OfficeMax, etc. -- and just using/buying a good monochrome printer for the stuff you are likely to print!]

[clare]

I've been in the computer business full time now for 26 years. Some are snake oil - others work. These two work. I do not need to reload windows to solve slow running computers. That says something.

My last computer, running XP, went over 5 years without a re-install. The only re-install prior to that 5 years was due to a failed hard drive.

You are free to disagree and continue reloading windows. No skin off my back.

[clare]

I maintain 27 inkjet printers in one office, along with 2 volour lazers and a black and white Oi laser multifunction. 26 of the inkjets are HP Officejet Pro 8000s. I refill all the cartridges. They are generally good for 2 years. About $4 per ounce for ink. The latest inkjet is a Epson or Canon (cannot remember off-hand) with factory CISS (just pour bulk ink into the tanks) We go through about 1 - 2 liters of ink a month (insurance office)

The two colour lasers are Toshiba copier/print centers with colaters and stapler. They also do a fair bit of scanning - but we also have a slew of Fujitsu highspeed duplex sheet feed scanners and 2 high speed Panasonic duplex sheet feeders. One of the panasonics is over 1000000 scans already - about half the fujitsus as well.

[clare]

I just bought 10 brand new computers with 7 pro on them, with option to run 8.1 Pro (either of which can be upgraded to 10)

[clare]

The only thing that kills more trees than an insurance office is a law office.

The millions of sheets scanned were to digitise records. so we don't have to store truckloads of paper.

[Don Y]

Yikes! Who needs that sort of color? And, why from ink jets? Laser is so much cheaper/faster...

Ah, so you're not paying the "liquid cocaine" prices that folks who have inkjets at home are paying -- while they look for an EXCUSE to print some color in their newsletter, correspondence, etc.

[SWMBO uses a monochrome LJ to print photos. She's typically not concerned with the colors -- she can make them up to suit her fancy (yellow sky, anyone?). But, what the mono printers provide is information about the *values* in the composition -- darks, lights, etc. (regardless of actual "color")]

Ah, so you're concerned with generating paperwork! (still don't see why color... "OVERDUE!! PAY NOW or Uncle Guido comes and breaks your legs!" ?)

I'd welcome a high speed scanner. Ideally, one that "photographs" the pages instead of a "scan down the page". Currently, when I want to scan bound materials, I have to sacrifice the original document (no problem) -- cut the binding off and put the pages in the sheet feeder... then, wait forever for each page to be scanned.

[OTOH, I don't have to babysit the process...]

Biggest time sink is proofing the resulting document: are all of the pages present? Any get scanned crooked?

[Tony Hwang]

I have pro quality inkjet for printing photo only. All other jobs are on multi function color laser.

[clare]

Colour just for logos and highlighting etc

I've got a Canon Maxify for my home printer - no refils on it - but I don't print a lot. I've also got an old B&W laser that I hardly use. Used to run Oki 400 . Can;t justify having laser and inkjet

Laser for liability slips doesn't work too well, and right now inkjet is running less per sheet than the laser. We use the laser for high volume presentation quality stuff and the B&W laser MF prints all the ecommerce orders (we run several really LARGE programs that are all done online. We had an injet doing the overnights, but it "calved" a month or so back and we had the laser sitting un-used. The inkjet was actually faster, and printheads last longer than laser drums ($230 drum in 4 months compared to 2 $85 printheads in a year)

20 pages per minute, duplex, at 300dpi on the Fujitsus - scanned to PDF. Skips the blank pages automatically and the feeders work great. Some of these scanners are pushing 10 years old. We are having to phase them out because there are no 64 bit drivers - hense the new Panasonics. The Fujitsus were over $2000 each new - we bought them all used .

Haven't had many issues with either double feeds or missed pages - and a few degrees of skew isn't an issue - and is not a common problem.

[clare]

2 customers, Acer Veriton. All sold before they were ordered. I do not stock ANYTHING any more. I have sold the one customer 40 of them now, and the other about 28 or 30.

[clare]

No hard copies required older than a certain point if at all - just need to be able to produce on demand. Everything is stored as PDF.

[Don Y]

Ah, OK. As a business, it makes sense. For most home users, I think they have to fabricate uses for color (esp if you consider how essential it may or may NOT be!).

[E.g., our HOA sends around a newsletter at random, unpredictable intervals -- barely more than a double sided SHEET of paper (of which, half a side is a dues request form!). The top third of the first side is invariably a color graphic that would only have appeal to someone who had been color-blind from birth... and only recently had full vision restored! I.e., a waste of EXPEN$IVE ink -- for which they need to shame folks into joining and paying dues! :-/ ]

We have a pair of "low temperature" LJ's (a 5p and 6p) that we use for most of our (low volume) printing needs. A cartridge lasts "practically forever" when printing 4 or 5 pages a week (copies of driving directions sent in an email, coupons for a local store, hard-copy of a webpage for a reference, etc.). As they draw so little power when idling (5W, IIRC), we can afford to just leave them on 24/7 (so no waiting when printing).

[The other printers we have draw much more power and have more noticeable startup times; so, you'd never think of leaving them on -- even if the printjob is spooled to another host!]

I don't understand the reference: why is a laser NOT good for a "liability slip" while an inkjet (presumably) is?

My lasers have the drum in the cartridge so it need only last as long as the toner -- I don't print enough to justify the mess of refilling (nor the risk of inhaling that crud: "Hmm, Doctor, this man's lungs are bright CYAN!")

The color laser has an imaging unit that will eventually wear out. But, I've got a spare -- along with a couple of sets of toner cartridges for it. Chances are, it will outlive *me*! :-/

I scan at 600dpi greyscale (or color if the source material warrants. The goal is to faithfully reproduce the document AND maintain enough detail in the images that an offline OCR can extract content -- keeping the raw images for "human arbitration" in the event something doesn't scan well. E.g., a document that I'm working with currently has hand drawn symbols in the text. It predates modern, affordable DTP tools so things like ligatures (e.g., "æ", "?", "?") didn't exist in the native typeface and had to be penciled in after-the-fact. Leaving this "decision" to an online OCR tool (and discarding the original images) easily results in a loss of information -- esp as you (I) may not get around to visually proofing EVERY document as it comes out of the scanner!

Cool!

A small skew isn't a problem. The OCR software can sort it out. I'm more concerned when a page partially jams and you get a large skew. The OCR software is no longer an issue at that point. Instead, you are concerned with any portion of the original image that may be not visible in the resulting scan (which will have been cropped to the "page size" by the scanner -- even if it could theoretically "see" that there was image beyond its extents!).

[clare]

Non standard sheet sizes, and toner, being thermal, melts and sticks to the folder you keep the certificate in in the car making an unreadable mess. Water resistant ink is MUCH better

The Oki system has separate toner cartridge and drum assy. Usually 10 to 20 toner refils to one drum replacement. Toners @ $28 list - drim at $235-ish. instead of $150 per combined cartridge (for third party - often more for OEM)

That's why insurance documents are saved in PDF format - and 300DPI is more than adequate resolution

If a paper jams the scanner shuts dowm - and like I said, we do not OCR

[Don Y]

OK. "Liability slip" == "Proof of insurance (document)" I was thinking slip in the context of "slip and fall"

Misunderstanding. You're using PDF as a container for TIFF (or some other raw image format). I use PDF to store *text* plus

*illustrations* -- i.e., AFTER the OCR phase.

I'm not worried about a jam but a case where a sheet feeds "crooked". E.g., scanner handles ~9" wide paper. But, can easily feed 5" wide pages (like small-format manuals, data books, etc.) as well. A 5" wide sheet going through at a 45 degree angle is still not going to exceed the width of the scanning bed -- so, nothing to get stuck on/jammed.

But, when the scanner software crops that skewed image to a 5" width, much of it will be "off the edge". I won't notice it unless I examine every page after scanning!

[clare]

You are making searchable PDF. PDF just means "portable Document File"

In our case it only needs to be readable by a human.

5 inch paper goes through just great if you set the infeed hopper for 5 inch paper.

With adjustable infeed bin, very little gets skewed.