All posts by Tim Anderson

rants

Fixing modern plastic junk that should be thrown away

I have a Canon MX700 all-in-one printer. I have written about it before. It went wrong and would do nothing but issue a sullen error 6a80. I discovered a way of clearing the error but still could not print; I remarked:

I now think that somehow cleaning up this part of the printer (which is hard to get at) could fix it.

This weekend the time came to prove it, or else to chuck it away. I should have thrown it away. Even though I pretty much fixed it, the time it took and the frustration it caused was really not worth it. Well, it could be worth it if you enjoy such things as a hobby; I am not sure if I do, but I do hate throwing stuff away that can be made to work with a bit of effort, so I guess I get some satisfaction from the process.

Technically of course the correct advice is to get a machine like this fixed by an authorised Canon service engineer, but this is not cost-effective for a three-year-old cheapish all-in-one inkjet printer. It might well have cost more than a new printer of better specification. A skilled engineer would have worked faster than I worked; but you have to get the machine to her and back again; it still takes a certain amount of time to strip a machine down, clean it up and re-assemble it; a professional engineer would probably have replaced parts that I was happy to clean up and re-use, so there would have been a parts cost; and there is an overhead of invoicing and so on; it is not surprising that the costs mount up.

My further observation is that machines like this which are mostly clipped together are not designed for extensive servicing. It is hard to take it apart without breaking a few delicate plastic clips or tabs. I guess once you learn exactly where to tug and how hard to press you get better at it; but clip on parts are not ideal if you plan to remove and re-assemble them with any frequency.

If we were serious about reducing waste we would address this. For example, if you require manufacturers to offer extended warranties as standard, then it is in their interests to make products that are more reliable and more fixable.

In the meantime, fools like me waste time fixing modern plastic junk that should be thrown away.

gaming

15 minutes with the Nintendo 3DS

Today I got to try a Nintendo 3DS for the first time. A few first impressions.

It is a neat unit though it feels a little flimsy compared to the original DS or the DS Lite. I like the charging dock that comes in the box. Here it is, complete with genuine user fingerprints. The joystick (or circle pad) on the left is beautifully responsive.

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My first question was: what is the 3D like? The answer is that it really works.

I spent some time playing with the Augmented Reality game, where you lay cards on a table, point the 3DS rear cameras at them, and see magic happen as three dimensional creatures emerge, intermingled with the real world around them.

Photographing this takes more skill than I possess, but to give you the idea, here are four Augmented Reality cards (all in the box as standard) that I have laid on the desk:

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and here is a snap of the 3DS top screen viewing those cards in the AR game:

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You cannot see it from this image, but the 3D effect is vivid, and the background is the desk on which the cards are placed. A gimmick, but an engaging one.

The built-in AR game is a lot of fun and makes use of the AR background in that you have to pan the camera around the targets to shoot successfully, something which cannot be reproduced in a purely screen-based game.

What about eye strain? I am not sure; but the 3D screen did seem to strain my eyes slightly. There is a slider which lets you reduce or disable the 3D effect easily, so the eye strain possibility should not deter you, except that since you are paying for a 3D device it is a shame not to use it.

There is a lot more packed into the 3Ds though. It has an accelerometer and gyroscope, one front and two rear (for 3D) cameras, and wireless LAN that supports WPA/WPA2 at last – this was an annoyance with the older WEP-only models.

The software has the usual Nintendo quality, complete with the ability to create Mii avatars similar to those on the Wii, but this time they can be based on a snapshot of someone’s face taken with the built-in camera.

The downside versus the original DS is the battery life – just 3-5 hours.

Still, DS fans will love the 3DS. But will it grow its market? I’m doubtful. A lot of the market for casual gaming has passed to smartphones now; and for someone with a modern smartphone, the 3DS duplicates a lot of functionality. Few smartphones have 3D of course, though I did see the LG Optimus 3D at Mobile World Congress last month.

But how important a feature is 3D? That is an open question, and I guess depends on how much difference it makes to gameplay. My quick impression is that while it is truly impressive when first encountered, it is something you soon feel you could manage without – but that is only a quick impression and I could be proved wrong.

audio, gadgets, mobile, reviews, smartphones

Review: Plantronics Voyager Pro UC v2 – go hands free everywhere

2 Comments

Today’s gadget is a Bluetooth headset, the Plantronics Voyager Pro UC v2. This little guy fits snugly in your ear and provides hands-free calls with your mobile or PC softphone. The UC stands for Unified Communications; and indeed, once I had plugged in the supplied Bluetooth adapter, which is pre-paired with the headset, my Microsoft Lync client automatically picked it up. It also works well with Skype.

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While that sounds simple, there are actually a fair number of features packed into this device. Some are more successful than others, but it is high quality and thoughtfully put together, right down to the unobtrusive magnetic closure on the padded case.

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Not shown in the picture above, the set also includes a few foam ear tip covers, which are comfortable but tricky to fit, and a mains adapter for charging when there is no suitable PC or laptop to hand.

I have to say that the fit of this headset is excellent: once in place you soon forget about it, and it feels secure and stable. Having wrestled with numerous more awkward headset designs over the years, this is not something I take for granted.

Now a few details. The headset has several controls: volume up and down on the top of the ear clip, power button near the bottom of the ear clip (above the micro USB charging port), and a call button at the ear end of the microphone stalk, in effect on top of the ear pad. These buttons have multiple functions depending on the state of the device and how you press them, so there is a bit of a learning process. For example, pressing and holding both volume buttons when music is playing pauses or resumes the music. Pressing and holding both volume buttons during a call mutes or unmutes the microphone.

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Much of the time you will be pressing these buttons while the headset is on, so you need to feel your way, as it were. How easy you find this will vary from one person to another. I found the volume buttons natural and easy to use, partly because if you rest your thumb on the bottom of the unit, you can easily squeeze the buttons at the top. The power button is a bit harder to find and use, but that does not matter too much because you would most likely take the headset off to use it, though it does speak the remaining talk time if you tap it and this can be handy.

I was less happy with the call button. If you are wearing the headset, and a call comes in, you have to tap this to answer. You can also use two taps to call back the last number, and tap and hold to use voice dialling on your mobile. I found the call button awkward to press and insufficiently tactile, though I am sure this improves with practice.

By way of mitigation, the Voyager has an auto-answer feature. A sensor in the device detects whether or not you are wearing it, and if you put the headset on when a call comes in, it will auto-answer.

The sensor also pauses music automatically when you remove the headset, and restarts when you put them back on.

If you pair the Voyager with an iPhone, you get a useful battery meter at the top right of the screen.

I found the Voyager rather good for listening to music. The quality is fine considering that it is mono. Of course it lacks the immersive sound and quality of stereo headphones; but that is the point – you would use the Voyager when you want private background music while still being in touch with what is going on around you. It is easy to carry on a conversation, for example, while music is playing.

I tried the voice dialling. This is a great idea in principle, since you can initiate a call without ever touching your mobile. First you have to press and hold the call button for two seconds, which is a little awkward as mentioned above. After a pause the Voyager beeps, and you can then speak a name to call. If you are lucky and it is found successfully, the Voyager reads the name to you, and if there are multiple numbers you can specify which one to call. If you are unlucky and your mobile starts calling the wrong person, a single tap on the call button ends the call.

I had some success with this, though it is a bit of an adventure. The key is patience. Once you have spoken the name, there is a wait of several seconds, at least with the iPhone, before anything happens.

PC Software

If you have a PC, you can install the Plantronics software to control your Voyager. The software is downloaded from the Plantronics site. You get a battery monitor that sits in the notification area:

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and a control panel that reports the detail of your device model and firmware, and offers a number of settings.

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Once again, the Voyager earns its UC designation by letting you automatically set your presence status when the device is worn or removed, though I struggled to find a setting for this that made sense for me personally.

One nice feature is that the Voyager integrates with PC media players as well as softphones, though some of my favourite media players are missing from the list.

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If you are a Mac user it seems you are less well served by software, though Bluetooth audio still works, and note that the Voyager integrates well with the Apple iPhone.

The Voyager Pro UC copes with both a PC and a mobile connected simultaneously – that is one of the things you are paying extra for – but I found that some details could get confused. For example, the iPhone got into an state where it could not play music though the Voyager until I disconnected the PC.

Extras

The Voyager is expensive for a Bluetooth headset, but is particularly well equipped. The case is well made and has a belt clip as well as a little pocket for the USB Bluetooth adapter. The mains adapter has an LED to indicate the charging state. The Bluetooth adapter has an LED to show whether the headset is connected, and flashes while data is being transmitted.

Conclusion

Overall I am impressed with both the quality and the range of features in the Voyager Pro. It works well alongside Microsoft Lync, for which it is optimized, and in my view it works even better as a headset for an iPhone or other smartphone.

Note though that if you do not need the Unified Communications features or the USB Bluetooth adapter, then the older Voyager Pro + model is less than half the price. However this model lacks the Smart Sensor of the Pro UC v2.

My main gripe is with the awkward call button. Personally I’d like to see this repositioned next to the volume buttons for easier access.

It is also worth noting that even six hours talk time, which you get from a full charge, soon disappears if you play background music, so charging can be a bit of a nuisance.

Nevertheless, using a device like this shows that it really is not necessary to juggle with a handset just to take a phone call; and if you can get voice dialling to work, you can keep the mobile out of sight until you need it for something important like browsing the web or, well, playing a game.

 

mobile, reviews, smartphones

Review: Plantronics Calisto 825: a speakerphone for Microsoft Lync, iPhone or other mobiles

When I was at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this month I came across the Plantronics Calisto 825, a speakerphone for Microsoft Lync (formerly known as Office Communications Server) or for any mobile over Bluetooth.

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The device is USB powered and seems particularly well designed and built. The sound quality is excellent, the touchscreen buttons clear and nicely spaced, and there are some neat extras.

But what does this thing do? When I received it I did not have Lync installed, so I tried it with an Apple iPhone. You pair the mobile with the Calisto, and once done, the device picks up the iPhone whenever it is within range.

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Answer yes, and calls to and from the mobile are routed through Calisto. I am a big fan of hands-free devices, and this one works really well.

If you get one of these, I recommend that you also get the optional PA50 wireless mic.

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This little guy docks and charges on the Calisto when not in use. When you are at your desk, you clip it to your collar. Speakerphones work better with an external mic, as otherwise the mic is in the same box as the speaker, making it hard to avoid feedback or echo. The PA50 has good audio quality. It also has a mute button on the sides – essentially you squeeze the unit to mute the mic – and a big button to answer or end the current call.

The PA50 has what Plantronics calls 360 degree sound. This means you can lay it on the middle of a table and use it as a mic for an entire meeting.

This is an effective iPhone speakerphone then; but it is also designed to work with Microsoft Lync Server, which I have just installed on my test network.

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Setting up Lync Server is not trivial, but that will be subject of a separate post. Once installed up though, integration with Calisto was simple: plug it in, and it works. I did have to set Calisto as the default audio and microphone for the Lync client:

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The beauty of this system is that now both your mobile and Lync calls arrive on the same device; and for dialling out you can choose between them. Note though that Calisto is not a full Lync client, in that it does not offer a pick-list of Lync contacts or show their availability: to get that, you have to use the client on the PC.

Some Calisto models can link to a landline as well, giving you three ways to connect.

I am impressed with Calisto, which is a nicely designed unit, particularly in conjunction with the PA50 wireless mic.

apple, gadgets, reviews

Review: Seagate GoFlex for Mac portable hard drive

I have been trying Seagate’s GoFlex for Mac portable drive, which packs 1TB of storage into a small, light, USB-powered package.

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The drive measures around 120x88x22mm – small enough to fit easily in a pocket or bag. Spin speed is 5400 RPM which is a little disappointing.

But what makes it a “Mac” drive? Mainly that it comes pre-formatted with Apple’s HFS + (Hierarchical File System Plus) file system, which is ideal for performance and reliability under OS X. A possible snag is that HFS+ is not readable from Windows by default, though Seagate has a solution, of which more in a moment.

It is worth noting that you can easily reformat the drive for Windows NTFS if you want.

There is a GoFlex app for the Mac which includes an information tab, a drive test, and the ability to disable the activity lights on the drive. I cannot imagine why you would want to do that.

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Seagate’s GoFlex series has a few extra tricks. The most distinctive is that the interface is removable, which means you are not restricted to the usual USB 2.0. This GoFlex for Mac drive come with two, one for USB 2.0 and the other for FireWire 800, which is substantially faster: up to 786Mbps vs 480 Mbps. USB 3.0 and eSATA interfaces are available separately.

Currently the MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro have FireWire 800 ports. It does make sense to use the faster port when available, especially with a drive of this size, though I cannot help thinking it would have been even handier if Seagate had managed to build the two ports into the main case, rather than having them as clip-on extras.

Still, the fact that you can remove the interface enables another GoFlex trick, the ability to slot the drive into a Media Sharing Dock. I’ve reviewed this dock here; it is a handy device though I have some usability concerns. I tried this with the GoFlex Mac and it worked well, an advantage being that you can access the files over a network irrespective of whether your operating system understands HFS+. Trivial point: the GoFlex drive is silver whereas the dock is black, a slight visual mismatch.

But what if you want to direct-attach your GoFlex for Mac drive to a Windows machine? Seagate has done a deal with Paragon to bundle its HFS for Windows driver. This normally costs around $40.00. It works too; though installation was not quite seamless. The problem is that the drive has to be attached for the install to work, presumably to protect Paragon from unauthorised installs. But when you attach the drive, both Windows and the Seagate Manager for Windows (if installed) prompt you to format it.

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If you agree to format the drive, you will lose any files already on it, so I clicked Cancel. However, while installing the drive software I got this dialog *again* – I suppose the thing to do is to check “don’t show again”. Seagate should update its Windows manager software to be HFS-aware. Once I had the Paragon HFS+ driver installed, and restarted Windows, everything was fine.

I would guess though that most customers for this drive will be using it with Macs and will not run into this issue. It is nice to have a drive designed with the Apple Mac in mind, and with generous 1TB or 1.5TB capacity this is a solid product.

Disclosure: Kudos to Seagate for asking me to mention in my review that that the review sample does not have to be returned.

gaming, rants

Poor usability in Microsoft’s Xbox Live billing and support

Leaving aside the defective hardware in its first release, Microsoft’s Xbox console is generally easy to use. I am not so impressed with the way Xbox Live purchases and accounts are handled though.

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Today’s story begins when I followed a link on the XBox 360 dashboard to upgrade my Live Account to Gold and get a free game: one of Kinect Sports, Kinectimals, Fable 3, or Halo Reach.

I followed the link and tried to pay. I got error 80190848. That’s right, just the number.

Of course I googled it. It seems that it indicates a problem authorising the credit card. Fair enough; the card on file was out of date. But what is wrong with a message that says “We could not authorise your payment; please check your card details”? This is poor usability.

Next, I found I could not delete the old card from my account. To do this you have to go to the Xbox Live website on your PC. However, you cannot take advantage of the special offer from the Xbox Live website. No, you have to use the dashboard, otherwise it does not apply.

OK, I left the dud card there for the moment, added a new card, and made the purchase.

That went through OK, but what about the free game? Nothing. No on-screen information. No message. No email.

OK, so I contacted support. This isn’t too good either. You go to the support page and have to find the tiny contact us link at the bottom of the page. At least that one works. Some paths through the site just don’t work at all. For example, go to My Xbox – Accounts – View Billing History. On the Billing account overview, click Contact support. You get this:

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Lovely. Note that for Xbox, it says go to to the Xbox Live Accounts and Billing page. Yes, that was where I just came from. I click it anyway:

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Nice.

Apparently Microsoft has lost a significant amount of money because of weak cryptography in its Xbox Live Points scheme. I wonder how much more it has lost thanks to annoyed or frustrated would-be customers?

gadgets, reviews

Review: Seagate GoFlex media sharing dock – Pogoplug in disguise

Seagate’s GoFlex media sharing device, also called GoFlex Net, is a dock with an ethernet connection. You can either attach a single USB drive – though the port is only USB 2.0, sadly – or else plug a GoFlex portable drive (reviewed here) into one or both of the two slots on top.

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If you use one of the slots, then a four-position LED gauge at the front indicates how full your drive is. Lots of lights means nearly full.

Now your drive(s) are attached to the network – but how do you access them? The key thing to realise is that this dock is also a Pogoplug. This is an online service that communicates with your local drives and enables you to access your files over the internet, or share them with friends.

This means that you have to register with Pogoplug, starting with a link on Seagate’s site for registering and activating your dock. I ran into a small problem here. First, I am behind a firewall and I had to enable UDP 4365 send and receive in order to enable Pogoplug to communicate with the Pogoplug service. Second, I had to type in the serial number from the device in order to activate, which in my case meant disconnecting it from the network temporarily. This might explain why there was a long delay before I received a confirming email; and until you click the link in this email your Pogoplug is not really activated.

I also found some usability issues in the setup. I looked at the Security Settings in my Pogoplug web dashboard and wanted to know the purpose of Enable SSH access for this Pogoplug device:

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As you can see from the screen, there is a help link at top right. However, clicking this takes you to the home page for Seagate support:

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Pretty useless in this context.

It turns out there is a story behind this. Each Pogoplug device runs Linux. Cloud Engines, the company which runs Pogoplug, had the bright idea of enabling access to the Linux terminal over SSH, so you could log into your Pogoplug from anywhere and do anything, provided you know Linux. SSH was enabled by default, and with a default password too.

This was a security hole, as bloggers like Rob Pickering observed. So now SSH access is disabled by default, and when you enable it you are prompted to create a new password. Much better.

In fact the security risk was not all that great, because typically Pogoplug is behind a firewall and unless you redirect the SSH port to the device, attempts to access it from the internet would fail anyway.

Anyway, I enabled it for internal access only, and was was able to get to the Linux shell.

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I also downloaded the Pogoplug software which enables you to access your attached drives as drive letters in Windows. There is similar software for Linux and the Mac. I was puzzled by the option to Enable multi-drive mode; again there is no help for this.

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It is no big deal and you can find it explained here; it makes a small difference to how the drives appear in your file manager, for example Windows Explorer.

Once I had done all this I had a P drive on my desktop:

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If you use this on a laptop, you can still see the P drive when out and about, provided you are on the Internet.

The folder called “Files shared with me” is initially perplexing. This refers to files shared with you by other Pogoplug users. It is nothing to do with files you are sharing out.

I thought, “There must be an iPhone app for this”; and there is. I downloaded it. It worked great over home wifi and I could access the drive; but what about when on the go? I turned the wifi off, so I was connecting over 3G only. Sadly the results were poor and I kept getting Error code 5 when I tried to view some images. In the end I created a tiny text file and managed to view it successfully, proving that the system can work:

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Note that Pogoplug never copies your stuff to its own drives, and when you access files locally they are not going over the Internet. Nothing is backed up online, even though it appears as if you can see your files on the Web.

But what about the GoFlex dock?

Indeed. This is meant to be a review of Seagate’s GoFlex media sharing device, but it is mostly about Pogoplug.

This is an issue. The front of the GoFlex box does not mention Pogoplug, though it is named on the back. The fact is, someone might buy this expecting a simple NAS (Networked Attached Storage) device, expecting to get immediately to the stage where the attached drives appear in Windows Explorer.

Instead, they find themselves having to agree to Pogoplug terms and conditions, and being handed a bunch of Internet features which may or may not be required. As I discovered, you can also have firewall issues.

It is possible to access the drives over a Windows network without using Pogoplug – but only after enabling Windows File Sharing for each drive, which is done through … the Pogoplug service. See the GoFlex Net User Guide [PDF] for more details.

It is also worth noting that this is a media sharing device and not a media streaming device. Well, that is not quite true; Pogoplus has added some basic media streaming using Upnp; but I had limited success when trying to use it with a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. On the PS3 I could view pictures OK, but even playing an MP3 file stuttered.

More positively, it is also true that the Pogoplug tie-in offers genuinely useful features. In a nutshell, it is file sharing over the Internet. There are other solutions for this, some aimed mainly at businesses, but Pogoplug’s effort is simple and cost-effective. Since the files remain on your own drive, there are no issues about having to purchase more space as there are with Internet synchronisation services like Dropbox. If you have a large amount of files which you want to make available from anywhere, Pogoplug is worth investigating.

Of course you could just buy a Pogoplug rather than Seagate’s GoFlex dock. The most obvious difference is that the basic Pogoplug, which costs much the same as Seagate’s device, has four USB 2.0 ports, whereas the GoFlex has one USB 2.0 port and two of special GoFlex docks which only fit GoFlex portable drives. If you do have GoFlex drives, the Seagate option is more convenient and looks better too.

Could do better

This is a decent product, but as is often the case among vendors other than Apple, strong features are spoilt by poor documentation and presentation.

My suggestion to Seagate: redesign the product slightly so that Pogoplug services are optional rather than required; and have an install application that does the magic of enabling Windows File Sharing without the need to register for Pogoplug at all. Then Pogoplug can be presented as an optional benefit, rather than being something forced upon you.

The packaging should be clearer and more open about the Pogoplug element of the product.

I’d add that both Seagate and Pogoplug need to work on conveying the essence of what the service does clearly, accurately and concisely. Misunderstandings seem to be common.

Nevertheless, this is a clever and capable device. It is just that it is nothing special as a NAS device, and poor as a media streamer.

Disclosure: Kudos to Seagate for asking me to mention in my review that that the review sample does not have to be returned.

gadgets, reviews

Review: Seagate GoFlex portable hard drive

You may think that one portable hard drive is very like another; and that is a problem for manufacturers like Seagate which want to differentiate their range and build customer loyalty.

The trouble is, one portable hard drive really is very like another; so what can it do? The FreeAgent GoFlex range is its answer, and Seagate has sent me the 320GB model for review.

It is billed as the “world’s most upgradeable hard drive,” though you can’t upgrade the thing you might most want to, its capacity.

What you can upgrade is the interface. The GoFlex drive has a detachable interface which in the model supplied to me has a mini USB port on one end, and what looks like a SATA (Serial ATA) connector on the other.

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You can replace the interface with FireWire 800, USB 3.0, or eSATA. To give you an idea of the performance implications, this is what each of these interconnects is capable of in theory, though I have not measured the performance of this implementation:

  • USB 2.0: 480 Mbps
  • USB 3.0: 4.8 Gbps
  • FireWire 800 786 Mbps
  • eSATA 3Gbps

You can see from this that USB 3.0 is theoretically the fastest, though if I am right in thinking that the drive itself has a SATA interface, it will not be any faster than eSATA and will likely be a little slower. However, USB 3.0 is the future and will be more commonly found on PCs and laptops – except for Apple fans who now have Thunderbolt at 10Gbps – so that is the pragmatic choice. Currently though, most computers only have USB 2.0, in which case you will need to get a USB 3.0 card for your computer as well as for the hard drive.

I question whether many users will bother to upgrade the interface on a portable hard drive. They are more likely simply to buy another one, especially as capacities steadily increase, making new drives better value in terms of the amount of storage you get. The downside of the GoFlex removable interface is that it makes the drive slightly bigger than it would otherwise be.

That said, it does have an additional benefits. You can plug the drive directly into a GoFlex media dock, which will be the subject of my next review, or into a variety of other docks which Seagate offers.

There are a few other things to mention. I use both Mac and PC, and while the GoFlex drive works fine with a Mac, it comes formatted as NTFS which on most Macs is read-only. However, the drive comes with a Mac installer that offers to install the Paragon NTFS driver, which enables read-write, or to reformat for OS X.

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I’d suggest reformatting for the Mac, unless you are likely to use the drive for exchanging files between Mac and PC.

I should also mention that the GoFlex drive comes with some bundled software. Seagate has done a deal with Memeo and offers to install various pieces of free and trial software.

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Since you can get all this software easily enough from the Memeo website, I am not greatly impressed, though there is a free copy of Instant Backup which would otherwise cost $29.95. Personally I use Windows 7 and I am happy to use Microsoft’s built-in backup software, though Memeo has a continuous backup system that looks interesting.

Online backup, which is a feature of Memeo’s paid-for Premium Backup, is definitely a step up from what is built in, but in this case you have to buy online storage space as well as the backup software so it is not going to be cheap – especially if, like me, you have ripped a large CD collection to a hard drive.

The big question: do the extra features in GoFlex amount to enough to meet Seagate’s goal of differentiating its range? The ability to dock the drive is handy, and if you plan on using the media dock then yes, but otherwise you may not really notice any benefit, though it is worth getting a USB 3.0 drive if you can use it or expect to be able to soon.

That said, from what I can tell there is little if any price premium for the GoFlex drives and my 320GB sample worked well, though 320GB is rather small these days, and I’d suggest that at least a 500GB model makes more sense if you plan on storing multimedia files or keeping backups.

GoFlex portable drives are also available in 500GB, 750GB, 1TB and 1.5TB capacity. The sizes of 750GB and above have a fatter case: 22mm instead of 14.5mm. The 1.5TB drive is USB 3.0 only.

Disclosure: Kudos to Seagate for asking me to mention in my review that that the review sample does not have to be returned.

Buy from Amazon.co.uk: SEAGATE GoFlex USB 2.0 – 500 GB – black

Buy from Amazon.co.uk: SEAGATE GoFlex STAE104 cable – USB 3.0

apple, Uncategorized

Fixing iPhone 4 not detected on a Mac

Today I noticed, while checking to see if iOS 4.3 was avaialble yet, that the iPhone was not detected by the Mac. No detection, no updates.

I checked in About this Mac -> More info -> USB and the iPhone was listed. So what went wrong?

I do not know the full answer, but it may well be caused by installing the iPhone SDK, which I updated recently. Fortunately the fix is simple. Download and install the iPhone Configuration Utility. You do not even have to run it; it fixes up whatever outdated or corrupt files caused the problem.

rants

When the cartridges cost more than the printer: the Inkjet market is absurd and disgraceful

14 Comments

I would love to be in one of those meetings at HP or Canon or Epson where they discuss the size of the ink cartridges in their next range of inkjet printers.

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“We got away with 10ml last time,” one might say. “Do you think we could try 8ml”?

“No, let’s do 6ml and call it lite. The 8ml can be XL for high capacity.”

The reason is this has come up for me is that my Canon MX700 all-in-one printer, which has until now performed well, has stopped working. The LCD display says Error 6A80, the lights on the print cartridges have gone out, and it will not do a thing.

While I am not sure what the problem is, it might possibly be the print head. This is a small piece of plastic which includes the actual print head with the microscopic holes through which the ink is squirted, and the cheapest I can find it is around £65.00.

On the other hand, I can get a new Epson BX305FW all-in-one printer for £72, less than that if I shop around.

When the cartridges cost more than the printer

Well, we are used to living in a throwaway society, but the situation with inkjet printers is beyond absurdity. The reason, you see, for the low prices of the hardware is that they are vehicles for selling ink cartridges, for which the prices are crazy high. Therefore there is a direct connection between the high prices of the cartridges, and their small capacity, and the likelihood of my taking a nice all-in-one printer with not very much wrong with it, and throwing it into landfill.

Since I needed to print some documents urgently, I got my old 2001 HP DeskJet 895cx down from the loft and went into town to see if I could still get cartridges for it. As I looked, I noticed that Tesco is selling the HP Deskjet 1050 all-in-one printer for £29.97. This takes HP 301 cartridges; colour is £16.97 and black is £13.97 (you need both): total £30.94. So yes, the cartridges cost more than the printer.

If the cartridges supplied with the Deskjet 1050 are the same size as the ones you buy, it would pay you just to buy a new printer whenever the cartridge runs out. This does not please me; it is a disgrace.

Now, curiously HP does not specify how much ink is in its 301 cartridges. Rather, it gives page yields. So we learn here that the HP 301 black ink cartridge  delivers 190 pages of average coverage. The high-capacity HP 301XL delivers 480 pages.

My old printer, as it happens, also has standard and high-capacity versions. The HP 45 standard (21ml) delivers 490 pages. The HP 45 high-capacity (42ml), which is the only one I have ever bought, delivers 930 pages.

In other words, mysteriously, what is now high-capacity is less than what used to be standard; what used to be high-capacity is no longer available, if you get the latest HP DeskJet.

You can pay a lot more than this for inkjet cartridges. Prices of £30 to £40 or more are common, for three-colour cartridges. Together with a black, it might cost you £60 or more to replenish.

This drives users towards the thriving alternative market in refurbished or compatible cartridges. This is unfortunate, because all inks are not equal, and a leaky or substandard cartridge can damage your printer. On the other hand, if you do the sums, the saving from just a couple of cartridge replacement cycles may be enough to buy a new printer. Buying the non-approved refills is the rational thing to do.

I am not picking on HP. Others vendors are equally bad.

Where do we go from here?

So where do we go from here? Logically, we should ignore the price sticker on the printers and look at the cost per page, which means mostly we won’t be buying these machines. We do though; in fact, I nearly bought the cheap Tesco printer this morning just to solve a problem, and so the cycle continues.

I would like to see the regulators take action on this. Instead of forcing Microsoft to produce pointless N editions of Windows, which nobody buys, maybe the EU could specify a minimum page yield for ink cartridges, to force change, or otherwise regulate this wasteful and damaging business practice.

Finally, if you are from HP or Canon or Epson or the like and want to tell me about the high quality and expensive research behind your ink technology, you are welcome, as long as you also tell me two things:

  • What is the ratio of manufacturing cost to retail price for your inkjet printers?
  • What is the ratio of manufacturing cost to retail price for your inkjet cartridges?

Thank you.

Update: I made some progress with Error 6A80. The print head is fine. Now, many people on the internet have reported this problem, though there are likely multiple reasons for it, but the only relevant article I’ve found is this one, which is in German. Note the helpful pictures. The print head should park at the right of the machine, where there are some pads and wipers that maintain the head. On my machine the wipers had got stuck in the forward position – see the first image in the thread. When I pushed them back – second image on page two – the error cleared. However it reappeared shortly after; but I now think that somehow cleaning up this part of the printer (which is hard to get at) could fix it.

Further update: I did eventually take the printer apart and pretty much fixed it.