There has been an age old question that’s been asked in the consumer industry and that is whether or not the ink that is made from manufacturers’ is better than third party vendors such as DollarInk. Let’s review the benefits of replacement ink: it’s cheaper and claims to yield as many prints as the OEM version (original equipment manufacturer) and be just as good quality. The OEM version however, claims that the premium ink is worth paying for as it has better quality and lasts longer. Let’s put it to the test.
Replacement Ink vs. OEM
While right off the bat, you save about 50% the sticker price, you aren’t necessarily getting the most bang for your buck. Replacement ink provides you with more prints yet most of the time, it doesn’t provide you with as good a quality printout as an OEM cartridge would. This means more vertical banding, less colours, and a more washed out picture. Another disadvantage of replacement ink is it doesn’t last as long. When put under a UV ray for an extended period of time, studies show a dramatic loss of picture from replacement ink printouts, sometimes over 50% loss of image.
Conclusion
Personally, printers are cheap enough now for you to purchase two of them and use premium ink from the OEM on one of them and replacement ink on the other. Because face it, not all of your printouts need to be crystal clear or stay there forever. An added benefit to this situation is the replacement ink gets used to its best ability, printing out as many copies as possible. You can use it as a test printer for images, and use it to print out unimportant lists and other documents that don’t need to last long and are only seen by you. There is a system out there for you, to use both types of inks and these are only a few suggestions. Good luck printing.
Sony has long been reputable for it’s camera’s which have been spun-off, to be included in their Sony Ericsson phones, one of which I’m a proud owner of. They take great pictures and are always on the cutting edge of technology. This camera is no exception to that rule, the W300 launched as one the only point-and-shoot camera’s with 13.6 megapixels, killing any rumours that the race for the most megapixels was dying.
Look
The camera is coated with ultra-high titanium with a high-end finish that will cover up and prevent most of the scratches and fingerprints you put its way. The camera comes in only one colour which is black so surprisingly, Sony hasn’t offered an array of colours that sometimes include pink.
Usability
For the older generation, Sony has taken into consideration that the baby boomers eyes are not as good as they used to be and can’t fully utilize the LCD screen, especially outside. My parents never use the LCD screen because they can’t see it, so they are forced to use the viewfinder. It makes it very easy for them to eliminate competition if they don’t have a viewfinder. The W300 is still in the running as it is accompanied with a viewfinder just over the 2.7” LCD screen.
The layout of the buttons and controls are always an important factor to consider when purchasing a camera. If you can’t get the right settings quick, the opportunity might have passed. The LCD screen takes a huge portion of the back of the camera so Sony was forced to place all the controls on the right and thus it may lack much freedom. So if you’ve got chubby fingers or maybe a little bit clumsy, this might not be good for you. The buttons seem to be squished together as their are a lot of them in a small compact area. The zoom is in the top right hand corner, and below that is a turn-table for the scene selection (which to be honest, isn’t used that much anyway), and at the bottom right is D-pad for menu movement and selection.
There are two buttons on the bottom for easy access to two things. The first is to review your pictures and videos taken which is much better than the timeline access where you have to push the button sideways to change from shooting mode, to slideshow mode, to video mode. The second button is to use the feature PHOTOMUSIC. It allows for a more creative slideshow letting you upload up to 8 tracks, each 5 minutes in length and play them alongside your photos.
Features
Along with PhotoMusic, Sony has included many intelligent features like SmileShutter, double anti-blur protection, in-camera retouching, and a wide array of scene modes. My favourite scene mode has to be the burst mode that can shoot 5 frames per second for those high action moments. The camera includes 13 scene modes, so you can really experiment with this camera. The SmileShutter is a useful feature as it allows you to give up control to the camera as to when it takes the picture. Obviously by the name you can tell, that when everybody you’ve selected has a smile on, the camera captures the picture. Now all we need is an eye shutter to work in combination with the SmileShutter technology so everybody is smiling and eyes open when the picture is taken. A friend of mine has a Sony camera with in-camera retouching capabilities much like this one does. It’s very handy to make simple adjustments to your photo like: cropping, red-eye removal, adding effects, and recolouring.
Conclusion
For the price of approx. $349, this camera is an absolute steal. It’s got 13.6 megapixels, Super HAD™ CCD imager and the precision-crafted Carl Zeiss® Vario-Tessar® lens. It further enhances picture quality with the Bionz Imaging Processor. Enabling high image resolution and fast reflex, this state-of-the-art processor achieves crisp, clean images by improving noise reduction. On top of that you can view your digital photos directly from the LCD screen or plug your camera into a Full HD TV for an eye-opening experience. For a point and shoot camera, I would look no further than this camera.
When Yahoo first acquired the rights to use Rocketmail in 1997 it never dreamed of using it today, to try and help push forward in Web 2.0. With Facebook and Myspace continuing to dominate peoples way of communication, companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are trying to find ways to bring the young generation back and make things seem relevant again. One way to do that, is to offer a new email address where the options are unlimited in terms of what’s before the @ symbol. The most recent company to do this was Microsoft with @live.ca and the more popular rollout was with Google and Gmail (@gmail.com). Now Yahoo plans to do it again, but with two choices, Rocketmail and YMail.
These two domains will be available for you to acquire 4pm Thursday June 19, 2008 at the main Yahoo Mail page.
Why bother with this you ask. We’ll all the mail clients are being pushed back by the younger generation and so Yahoo is losing traffic which is the backbone of their advertising revenue. Without traffic, Yahoo loses tons of money. “There are lots of companies trying to extend the e-mail box further and have it be your dashboard for your personal life,” he said. “It keeps your brand attached to the user experience.”
Get your new domain name today, and be sure to spread the word.
I downloaded Windows Folder Share in a bid to sync my computer with my one downstairs almost instantly. After trying and failing with many other applications, I was pleased to find this was set up nicely in the beginning. First off, you need to download the application, FolderShare, for all of the computers you want access to and be able to sync with one another. With this, you need a user account that surprisingly does not have to be a Live account. The great thing, and drawback is you don’t sync the whole computer, rather you sync individual folders.
Once the account was created, and the application was downloaded on both my laptop and desktop, I found an easy to use interface that showed me the computers that were online and what I could do with them. With FolderShare, you can share folders not only with your computers, but you can share folders with friends. Basically there are two things you can do right off the bat from the main menu: sync folders with your friends or your computers.
Sync With Friends
First create a personal library to share with your friends. This really means, pick the folder which you’d like to be able to share with your friends. You can choose from any of the computers that are online at that time. All of your computers might not be available because they might be turned off and therefore you won’t have access to them at that time. Then you’ll click the folder which you’d like to share and at the bottom hit “Create Library Here”. Then add all the emails and their associated permissions (4 to choose from) and send out those invitations. They would then download the application and then pick where they’d like to sync your folder, on their computer. Once they’ve chosen it will start syncing intitially as Foldershare placeholder file and then over a short period of time they will become their true files. In literally seconds, files will automatically show up if you change it on one computer which is amazing for a free beta program.
Sync Across Your Computers
To sync across your computers you do need the application on both computers but it’s very easy to do. First on one computer choose the folder you’d like to share and hit “Create Library Here”. Then choose the other computer you want to sync with that folder. You’re done and automatically the files will be there next time you go to that computer.
At first, it might be a little daunting to understand how it works because the new language “library” might be confusing. Another improvement that might be in the works is the folder selection. For example if you want to share the folder called “Pictures” you have to click it and then hit “Create Library Here” even though it shows no files or folders.
On July 11th, American and Canadian consumers will be able to purchase the 3G versions of the Apple iPhone. Even people who bought the 2.5G iPhone on or after May 27 will be able to switch their phone with the 3G phone for no cost at all except their old, inferior iPhone. In the US, it will cost consumers there $199 for the 8GB version and $299 for the 16GB version and should be north of that, north of the border where I’ve been hearing $299 for the base version. Why should Canadians pay more for the phone though? We already pay more monthly with Rogers APRU (Average Revenue Per User) at $72 compared to AT&T’s current ARPU of just $49. With the new spectrum being auctioned off, it should lower prices but after the iPhone release, analysts are expecting an ARPU rise of $30 or more.
Back to the phone though. The Apple version of 3G technology will blow away the previous generation of that technology, EDGE, and even beat current 3G speeds with 36% faster pageloads than competitors like the Nokia N95. It will be open to 3rd party apps and the phone will be available internationally. Battery power wasn’t forgotten in the development of this version unlike the new Blackberry, which from rumours seems to lack a decent battery life. The 3G iPhone will have 300 hours of standby, 9 hours of 2G talk, 5 hours of 3G talk, 24 hours of audio, and 7 hours of video.
GPS is going to be standard, using A-GPS, which works in conjunction with regular satellite GPS data and cell towers for much faster location times. On top of that, they’ve thrown Wi-Fi into the mix to lock up your exact location. Apple isn’t fooling around here with so many solid features being rolled into one, at a cheaper and slightly smaller package. Although there isn’t a user interface change or exterior change, Apple still presents a good product to the market.
The reason why Mozilla Firefox has been staying strong over these past years is not only its security, its quickness, and its ability to be stable, but for its wide array of add-ons it provides to its users. There is a vast oasis of these add-ons and sometimes its hard to pick out the best ones. Today I’m going to pick those needles out of the haystack and help you make your Firefox experience better.
1. With so many websites and communities on the web it’s hard to keep track of all of them. Even with Firefox’s built-in password manager it still is very annoying when you have to clear your private data, and then most of your passwords are lost, or they don’t automatically fill it in for you. With Sxipper, it not only stores your login information, it has different aliases to choose from and a cool interface. On top of that it’s a auto-form filler and you have the option to choose what you reveal to those pesky websites. They also give you the option of using a disposable email address.
2. Notes are very handy to have because some of the best ideas come at the most random times and its why we lose most of them to outer space. There are two add-ons for two different kind of people. One is very simple and lacks the option of a one touch pop-up and minimizer, yet the other one might give too much customizability that it’s just pointless. Those two are QuickNote and EverNote. The reason why EverNote might be too complicated is it lets you share your notes with other people and take them around with you through your online account. Do you really need another account for just notes?
3. This add-on is a must for security reasons. It’s been named by PC World as one of the best and for good reason. It blocks unwanted javascripts and other scripts from running when you load a webpage. You do have the option of letting them run but only for trusted websites. Called NoScript, it truly encompasses all your security needs.
4. If you are an online album lover then you’ll love this add-on. Linky will let you select multiple links and open them in a new window or tab. Especially good for photo albums where there are multiple pictures, Linky will speed up your viewing and stop you from getting a sore index finger.
5. This is a small but useful add-on to enhance your browsing experience. TabPreview is just like it says. It previews the tab you are hovering over to give you a better idea of what that tab is all about. When Firefox first came out, the tabs were a huge advantage over IE6, but then IE7 countered with the tabs. Now Firefox holds the lead again in this department with this add-on.
When I was making my switch to Wordpress.org I knew it would be impossible if I didn’t get some help. First I tried my hoster, Lowcost-webspace, but they only offer support via b2evolution, so I was forced to ask friends and look on websites for tutorials as well as contact other people who had knowledge in this field. I ended up with nothing after all that but while searching around Wordpress, I stumbled upon a website called Install4Free and Wordpress told me it would do all the work for me if I didn’t like working with all these new words. All I needed was a quick few things like your host, cpanel, and ftp. For the cpanel and ftp you need the name of it (i.e. Lowcost-Webspace and FireFTP), the username, and password. I was supplied with this by my good friend at Lowcost-Webspace as I would have never gotten an FTP account or cPanel.
After agreeing to all the terms and conditions which are very reasonable, I filled out the form with all my contact info and website info and submitted it. The next morning I awoke to a new email saying “Your new WordPress blog has been successfully set up.” and with another email saying “Your Install4Free installation request #3353 has been followed up”. These were the 2 best emails of my life because I have been trying to get onto Wordpress.org for such a long time with no avail as the all the lingo was to hard for me to follow.
If you still need help on how to fill in your website information, I am now glad to help so don’t hesitate to leave a comment or contact me directly.
When my dad told me he had $55 worth of Reward Zone coupons that could be combined and did not need any minimum purchases you could imagine I was thrilled. When it came down to it though, I really didn’t NEED anything. Yeah I could pick up anything including an SD card, USB stick, video game (NHL 08), or really anything. What did spark my interest though was some Creative speakers on sale that were a bargain price of $59.99 compared to all the sets.
The Creative Inspire T10 were good looking and are 2.0. They offer great quality for the price with a unique BasXPort that doesn’t replace subwoofers but they do a good job masking the fact that you don’t have one. For me it’s a great alternative as these speakers are part of my laptop setup and the less wires the better. For all you techno geeks, it’s got dedicated tweeters for outstanding high frequency performance.
What I noticed is the easy knobs that allow easy adjusting of the volume as well as the tone. They have easy to access its headphone jack on the side and auxiliary input such as mp3 player. This is not a factor for me because I have all my music on my computer but if you want truly portable speakers then this option allows for easy connections.
My true opinion after listening to these speakers that you wouldn’t learn from the Creative website is that like all speakers they start to crap out 3/4 of the way through to full power. I don’t suggest putting it to the test but for most you halfway to full power will be enough and that’s where they truly excel. The way they differ from integrated laptop speakers is the bass and sound quality they output and for an easy listener like me they are perfect. To pick up the perfect CD for these speakers look at the review of Fabolous’s new CD, Working Hard, Playing Harder at Bebop Talk.
