The High Cost of Flattery

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Quote:

Thanks, th. I had a little buyer's remorse there until you mentioned 80 lbs and clunking noises.

Its not so bad. My old laser was about 25lbs and the footprint is about the same. Comes with an ethernet connection and print server built in so you could conceivably put it anywhere.

Plus it only makes noise WHILE you're printing. I wouldnt stick this in an office environment right next to 3 peoples cubicles, but for a home printer its cool.

[bow-tie]

Quote:

...*I wouldnt stick this in an office environment right next to 3 peoples cubicles, but for a home printer its cool.

YEAH! *Us dwellers of the cube farm like our peace and quiet...

I have to go print another TPS report now...

[yakers]

TH says:
Not to mention the key question, is there a kayak made with a space for a color laser printer?

Wow, that is amazing. I know a bit about kayaks (Screen name= yakers) I have three right now including one I made. And I know a bit about computers/printers. But I had NEVER thought about combining the two. The ideas I get from this board. Now I do sometimes use a cell phone in the kayak and I have thought of getting a picture of me using my Powerbook as a bit of a spoof as my son considers me a nerd type. But a printer? Beyond my technology.

BTY Arrete, you can carry a folding bicycle in a kayak. And as two of my current kayaks are folding models I can authoritively say a folding kayak can be carried on a bicycle but the usual method is to have a small folding trailer attached to the bicycle. There are several parties that went all over Europe this way. That is pretty cheap travel.

ANY kayak questions, send them my way.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Think of the prospects of finding a beautiful spot in your kayak, taking a digital photograph, printing it out immediately and spending the rest of the afternoon lost in wonderment at the beautiful scenery in the photo.

I can see a set of grave benefits and questions to the folding bike/kayak scenario. Can you strap one to ones back while riding the other, and if finding a sudden flood while on your bike or shallows while in your kayak, simply execute a rolling maneuver and continue nonplussed? If you put one on top of the other and folded both concurrently, would a small hole be ripped in the fabric of the universe, causing everything to cease to exist (I suggest we not experiment with this to find out)? Could a flooded kayak be folded and used as a camelback whilst biking? What would you do with the printer while your kayak was folded?

[wabmester]

I hate to point this out, but with all of this talk about folding bikes in folding kayaks, you're missing the obvious.

What you really want is an amphibious biyak. I mean a kaycycle. Well, you know what I mean.

[arrete]

Gurk! You guys are too much! Who would have thunk we'd have so many kayak experts - even folding bikes. I am all amazement.

arrete

[unclemick]

Who would have thunk it?

Will kayaks find a place alongside the now legendary recyled dryer sheet?

We have a bushel basket of used boats down here of all kinds - except kayaks.

I wonder if my INTJ left handedness is the cause of lusting after a kayak. I did see a PBS camping show on kayaking the Atchafalaya Swamp.

[Jane]

Quote:

ANY kayak questions, send them my way.

I got a question: do you have any tip to do eskimo roll easier? This past weekend I tried (ok, not too long, I think I was only trying it for 20 min) to do the eskimo roll with one of my friends trying to instruct me, but I couldn't roll. As last resort I had to pull the string of the skirt thingy and just had to swim to the surface.

Jane

Every printer I've ever had stopped taking the paper. I got a new computer and it want even try to take it. I'm going to take my folding kayak and put it in my backpack and get on my folding bicycle and ride to Staples.

K. B. Sharkstooth

[yakers]

Quote:

I got a question: do you have any tip to do eskimo roll easier? This past weekend I tried (ok, not too long, I think I was only trying it for 20 min) to do the eskimo roll with one of my friends trying to instruct me, but I couldn't roll. As last resort I had to pull the string of the skirt thingy and just had to swim to the surface. Jane

Jane, I can not roll reliably. It takes practice and needs to be natural. Fortunately the two folding kayaks are very stable. Any tusnami that would turn them over would kill me anyway. And I never go out alone on the ocean with my wood kayak, so there should be some assistance. But pertinent to this group, I am sure I could not roll a kayak with a printer in it. Besides a double is more suitable for a printer and those things are virtually unrollable.

[wabmester]

Doing an eskimo roll in a biyak is easy. Just hold your breath and pop a wheelie.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I only rolled over once and I was screwing around trying to lie flat on top of the kayak when it happened.

[Jane]

Quote:

Jane, I can not roll reliably. It takes practice and needs to be natural. *Fortunately the two folding kayaks are very stable. Any tusnami that would turn them over would kill me anyway. And I never go out alone on the ocean with my wood kayak, so there should be some assistance. But pertinent to this group, I am sure I could not roll a kayak with a printer in it. Besides a double is more suitable for a printer and those things are virtually unrollable.

Good to know - no worries of printer getting wet and all that. Btw, with all this talk about printer on kayak, do you use water-proof printer? Or do you just wrap the printer in clear clingy plastic wrap and cut a slit for printouts? What happen if you run out of ink? Packing extra ink cartridges will just add unwanted extra weight. How do you improvise?

Jane

[cute fuzzy bunny]

You mean you dont know the answer to that one already?

You wrap it in dryer sheets of course, and get the high capacity toner cartridges to avoid running out.

Posted by: TH Posted on: Oct 19th, 2004, 9:21pm

Quote:

I only rolled over once and I was screwing around trying to lie flat on top of the kayak when it happened.

Inquiring minds want to know...were you alone?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

You know, five seconds after I wrote that I said "some wiseguy is going to get something going on that comment".

It took me five seconds because I've been away from the east coast for a while, where picking ones friends apart is an art form, and a highly valued one.

So you're from the east coast Engrgal?

Actually I *was* alone. It was a really nice warm day late in the fall (which is december here), but the water was cold. I wanted to see if I could sprawl out on top of the thing and get a little tan.

Had I not been alone, there was a nice little island a few minutes paddle away. TH's equation says any boat under 30' in length, especially piddly little plastic kayaks, are neatly outdone by any island with a reasonably workable beach.

For those who are mathematically inclined (and you know who you are), thats B<30^(plk) < I (rwb)

[trumpeting_angel]

I would never have imagined your seductions to be formulaic!

-Anne

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Nothing really, really good happens by accident.

A good formulaic approach with enough branching options and a small amount of improvisation at the appropriate moments can be a very good thing...

[BigMoneyJim]

Quote:

After a lot of research I got the Konica/Minolta 2300DL for ~$440 at Sams Club. It comes with the "supersized" cartridges instead of starters, and those are ~100-110 each (four of them) by themselves.

Wow, those color lasers really have come down. How's it holding up so far? I just went to Sam's to look at one and it looks a bit flimsy. Then again So was my Panasonic KXP4400 LED pageprinter I used for years.

I agree about the inkjets. I don't print often enough so the ink dries out. My Panasonic simultaneously ran out of toner and drum life a year or two ago, and although I still could have mail ordered toner and a drum it was pretty clear the supplies for this thing would become very hard to get next time around. At the time I was aggresively paying down debt and resisted the temptation to buy the HP Laserjet 1200 even though I knew it would be cheaper long-term. (I didn't buy supplies for the Panasonic because I'd either have to stock up on toner--total cost near buying the new printer--or risk wasting drum life after the first toner ran out.)

Now that I have the debt paid off and see this color laser printer I may spring for it. I've been fighting off the urges to buy a flat panel monitor, HDTV and a laptop, but in the case of this printer I think it's actually a money saver for me long term.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Its holding up great. We just printed a bunch of photos, including copies of our wedding photos, for framing and refrigerator purposes. I estimate we've printed about 400 mono pages and at least a hundred photos so far.

I can definitely state its a money saver. My total for printers, ink cartridges and photo paper over the last 4 years is FAR more than $440. Hell, I think we paid a hundred bucks just for the photo paper.

I guess if you get one printer, stick with it, and keep it in use often enough to use ALL of the ink, you might get decent cost results. A lot of my 4-5 year old ink jet photos are already fading badly though.

One other option I noted at Sams Club...digital photo prints for 17c each (4x6). They have three big machines that take all of the digital photo memory cards, a floppy or a cd. You pick and crop the photos you want, it chugs them out on photo paper.

I considered keeping just a monochrome laser (cheap) and going this route. The wife overruled me, she wants to be able to print out photos and color output whenever she wants to and decided that scraping a few bucks out of this was "going backwards for a technology savvy family".

Not that decisions like this bother me. In fact, I think I left skid marks on the floor on my way out to the car to go buy it...