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What computer trick have you learned recently?
04-06-2010, 01:02 PM
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#1
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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Posts: 12,880
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What computer trick have you learned recently?
My Brother printer has been bugging me because it would tell me the cyan ink was empty even though I could see that there was still plenty left. Worse, it wouldn't even print black and white because of the "empty" cyan.
I learned, from this site, that I can fool the printer into thinking the ink is OK, by putting some black tape on the cartridge.
__________________
Al
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04-06-2010, 01:13 PM
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#2
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 13,143
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T-Al,
That's a pretty neat trick you discovered.
Can't think of any hardware related fixes myself at the moment. Sometimes I do select the print in greyscale option to conserve color cartrides that are low when there is plenty of black ink left.
IMO, I pretty much have given up on owning inkjets and prefer to try and get a laser as inkjets feel too much like bait and switch to me -- buy a color printer for $39 but then spend a fortune on inkjet refills.
Easysurfer
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04-06-2010, 01:15 PM
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#3
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Oct 2003
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__________________
Sometimes death is not as tragic as not knowing how to live. This man knew how to live--and how to make others glad they were living. - Jack Benny at Nat King Cole's funeral
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04-06-2010, 01:21 PM
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#4
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Northern IL
Posts: 26,887
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TromboneAl
I learned, from this site, that I can fool the printer into thinking the ink is OK, by putting some black tape on the cartridge.
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Yes, but now your VCR is blinking
" 00:00"
" 00:00"
" 00:00"
" 00:00"
" 00:00"
" 00:00"
OK, on the printer front, I learned that I can drill the top off an old cartridge, fill it with Rubbing alc and get a real good cleaning of the print head. But my printers use the old 'dumb' cartridges, no electronic over-rides on anything. It simply counts the amount of printing to estimate when the cartridge is near empty.
Too many cleaning cycles and the printer stops, claiming the absorbing pads are full. You can clean them and fix them yourself, at least on the Canon iXX and some Pixma series.
If you run out of black ink or your black is clogged, select your text and choose a very dark color (not totally black). The printer will use the colors to print, this can get you you something use-able until you have a chance to fix it.
Use a "print-to-pdf" function to avoid most printing in the first place. Built into Macs and Linux, there are ways to do it in Windows.
-ERD50
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04-06-2010, 01:24 PM
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#5
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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Location: Northern IL
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Quote:
Originally Posted by easysurfer
Sometimes I do select the print in greyscale option to conserve color cartrides that are low when there is plenty of black ink left.
Easysurfer
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That is a good one. I have default settings in my printer list for the various quality levels, and I use the lowest one that will get the job done. Usually it just needs to be readable, I'm not producing ads for glossy magazines or anything. Prints MUCH faster, and saves ink.
-ERD50
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04-06-2010, 01:28 PM
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#6
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Moderator Emeritus
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 12,901
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I have had wi-fi issues for a while (signal dropouts, slow network, etc...) and I found out yesterday that this was due to too many wireless routers in our neighborhood broadcasting at the same frequency and creating interferences. After doing some research on the topic, I have learned that routers could broadcast on different channels, and once I figured it out the fix was easy. Everything works great now.
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04-06-2010, 07:04 PM
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#7
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Collin County, TX
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Speaking of ink...this might save a buck or two...
Here's a way you might save $20 this year: Change the font in the documents you print.
Because different fonts require different amounts of ink to print, you could be buying new printer cartridges less often if you wrote in, say, Century Gothic rather than Arial. Schools and businesses could save thousands of dollars with font changes.
Here's a legal way to print money: change the font - Yahoo! News
__________________
There's no need to complicate, our time is short..
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04-06-2010, 07:56 PM
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#8
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 1,934
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dex
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That's my best recent trick too.
__________________
And if I claim to be a wise man, it surely means that I don't know.
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04-06-2010, 08:28 PM
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#9
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 3,681
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I learned a similar trick for the toner cartridge for our Brother laser printer. When the empty toner light comes on and it stops printing you take out the cartridge and put tape on a little view window that the printer uses to sense toner level. Printing resumed and it kept printing for another 4 or 5 months. I watched a few online videos where folks demonstrated how to do it and how long it kept printing.
__________________
Married, both 69. DH retired June, 2010. I have a pleasant little part time job.
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04-07-2010, 09:30 PM
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#11
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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I discovered that I could buy DD a new HP 2660 inkjet printer cheaper than I could buy the new ink cartridges. I got it a month ago (with ink cartridges) for $28.99. The new cartridges would have cost $31.99.
__________________
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." - Anonymous (not Will Rogers or Sam Clemens)
DW and I - FIREd at 50 (7/06), living off assets
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04-07-2010, 09:35 PM
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#12
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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I posted this a while back in a different thread, but it's worth reposting. It's a hidden God Mode capability in Windows 7 (and 32 bit Vista).
"By creating a new folder in Windows 7 and renaming it with a certain text string at the end, users are able to have a single place to do everything from changing the look of the mouse pointer to making a new hard-drive partition".
Understanding Windows 7's 'GodMode' | Beyond Binary - CNET News
__________________
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." - Anonymous (not Will Rogers or Sam Clemens)
DW and I - FIREd at 50 (7/06), living off assets
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04-08-2010, 07:51 AM
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#13
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by harley
I discovered that I could buy DD a new HP 2660 inkjet printer cheaper than I could buy the new ink cartridges. I got it a month ago (with ink cartridges) for $28.99. The new cartridges would have cost $31.99.
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I've heard (but haven't verified) that the ink cartridges you often get with the new printer (especially cheapies) are 1/2 size of the ones you would buy.
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04-08-2010, 07:56 AM
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#14
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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Things never are the way thay seem...the ink cartridges are an investment and the printers are disposable
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04-08-2010, 08:24 AM
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#15
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RunningBum
I've heard (but haven't verified) that the ink cartridges you often get with the new printer (especially cheapies) are 1/2 size of the ones you would buy.
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I checked before I bought, and the ones included with the printer listed the same number of pages printed per cartridge as the new ones. Who knows what they will really produce, though.
__________________
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." - Anonymous (not Will Rogers or Sam Clemens)
DW and I - FIREd at 50 (7/06), living off assets
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04-08-2010, 11:05 AM
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#16
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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Here's another one.
Simple Sticky Notes
__________________
Sometimes death is not as tragic as not knowing how to live. This man knew how to live--and how to make others glad they were living. - Jack Benny at Nat King Cole's funeral
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04-08-2010, 11:16 AM
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#17
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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04-08-2010, 11:36 AM
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#18
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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Location: Northern IL
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I guess I'm surprised at how many of these perceived valuable 'add-ons' are built right into the Mac OS.
'God-Mode'? geez, we call that 'System Preferences' ( a much more accurate name, IMO ), available on every Mac 'under the Apple'. No secret handshake required.
The one I have added to my Mac, and IIRC was on the first ones in 1984, but somehow faded away, is a multiple clipboard thingie. I use the one called PTHPasteboard, but there are others (the old version was free, and available if you search, but they push the pay one now). Saves the last 100 or so things you copied, so you can go back and paste something from recent history. Really should be built in, I think excel on Windows had some limited capability like this, I don't know if W7 has this or not.
-ERD50
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04-08-2010, 10:14 PM
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#19
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dex
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Been using a similar app for years Stickies. Great, I use it nearly every day.
I don't want to be too obvious or anything, but do y'all know about pdf printers like Bullzip FREE PDF Printer? Allows you to virtually print any document into a pdf format instead of to paper. Cuts down on physical (paper) storage tremendously.
__________________
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." - Anonymous (not Will Rogers or Sam Clemens)
DW and I - FIREd at 50 (7/06), living off assets
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04-09-2010, 12:59 PM
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#20
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 2,603
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Had trouble with a Carot cartridge for a Dell printer. Called tech support thinking it would be a "return". The rep said to it in warm water (up to the lower 1/2 of the cartridge). This freed the clog ink jets ... worked like charm.
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FIRE'd since 2005
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