Amazon's Daily Deals

Even Frugal Propellerheads that keep an eye on everything need a little luck every now and then! A few nights ago, my wife reminded me that I needed to order some 3.5mm headphone splitters for her classroom before I went to bed. So I rolled over, and got on the laptop to order this thing. Weeeeell....in the midst of this, I noticed that Amazon was running a "deal of the day" as the Sandisk Extreme 240Gb for $154.99! I nearly fell out of bed! I had been charged with getting another laptop ready for my wife, by her highness, and as luck would have it, I had lucked into a nicely spec'd T61 for $80 on Craig's List a month or so ago. All I had been waiting for was to find a good deal on a bigger SSD. I'd say that 240Gb qualifies as a "bigger" SSD since I run 128Gb ones on my machines!

So anyway, from just dumb luck, I'll have her in a pretty quick upgrade from the Z61m that she's been working on. It needed a rebuild anyway, so it'll get that, and go to her new school with her.

End of Summer 2012.....

Conceptually yes, but not really..... Today is the last day of summer for me. Tomorrow teachers report for training.

Some of you are probably thinking: It must be rough, being off for 2 months straight! I'm not going to get into the draining aspects of dealing with other human beings (unfinished ones at that), and the need to recharge. I'll just leave it at that we get paid approximately 2/3rds of what other college degree'd professionals in a general sense. It's not a bad job with rough kids in the "Blackboard Jungle" sense.

It's really more like the "Welcome Back, Kotter" version, but with a lot more pressure, 5 Horshacks (504 Behavioral Mods), 3 Vinnies (Special Ed), 5 Washingtons (Cultural/Ethinic performance tracking), and 3 Juan Epsteins (ESL). It isn't 1976 after all.

Most of time, it's really fun, and me being me, teaching world history; it's really a little more like this.

The real downside is that it gives me less time to work on my avocation which as you know is all things technology! Since summer is about to be over, lets take stock on what got done......and (unfortunately), not done.

For the bad, I did not rebuild "Hercules", my Windows Home Server, so that'll be on the agenda as soon as the beginning of school stuff settles down, some time around the end of September. I did not rebuild my daughter's X30 "Sparrow" Princess Edition into an X31, but that will really needs to wait until the garage isn't still 110 degree at 9pm. So I'm thinking, 2nd half of October for that. My personal laptop, the X300 "Raptor", was needed for client work and those times when the desktop workstation was down for upgrades on and off all summer. That'll be a VERY short and quick project, so I'm thinking over the weekend some time in the next couple of weeks. I also managed to acquire ANOTHER project during the summer, which is a T61 for my wife, who now would like a second laptop because her new school district has desktops. So, the Z61 will need a reload, and her personal stuff needs to be moved over to the T61 which I intend on installing a SSD. That'll probably be some time in the second half of September when I get enough money to buy another SSD.

That sounds like a lot didn't get done, which is pretty bad! Well, actually, just as much good occurred, but much of it was unexpected which pushed everything back. The most important was that I ended up with a LOT more computer work over the summer than expected. That's good for the bank account, but not as much for personal projects! 

So what were the good results then? At the beginning of the summer, there were two things that if asked, I would have put on a "wish list", and that was a backup DSLR and a tablet. Well....it came to pass that I was able to buy a backup DSLR for my system: the amazing "Plastic Fantastic" with 28-80mm/f3.3-5.6 "G" spec lens.....couldn't be happier. At almost the same time, I bought a broken ThinkPad Android Tablet. WHAT? How does that accomplish anything? Be patient and soon (fingers crossed) and all will be revealed in a future post. Moving on, the main laser printer was upgraded from a LaserJet 4000 to 4100, and as detailed in the last post, the "Blackbird" was upgraded, then upgraded again to what I believe will be it's final version which I would expect to last at least two years. 

It sounds like I didn't get an awful lot done and in some ways made more work for myself, but I don't mind. Some years ago when I made the decision to go back to teaching and not continue my IT career, it was a good call for me. I love teaching, and working on technology part-time helps me love it even more, since I can keep my mind off of the stress of that profession as well as maintain my love for the other.

Evolution of the "Blackbird"

Yes, that's right....my desktop computer is named for the famed SR-71 "Blackbird" of Lockheed's "Skunkworks" fame. Actually, all my computers have network names from military aircraft, mostly because they are the coolest things ever and the people who fly/flew them are America's unknown superheros! 

There was in fact a commercial pc version by that name when in late '07, early '08, HP brought out their super gaming computer. It was equipped with the then new, Intel QX6800 "Extreme" version of the Core 2 Duo Quad processor. It sold for between $6500 and $7000. I couldn't afford one.....actually, I couldn't even afford to buy the processor by itself.

So this is what I did. A little over 2 years ago, I started to build a desktop that would function as my photo-editing, music ripping, video transcoding, all-singing/all-dancing computer. So I started by finding a case that would last through several generations of rebuilds and still not look old. That means unobtrusive, big enough to handle anything that I wanted to put in it and rugged. I used the Cooler Master Centurion 5, which essentially has an all mesh front. The first thing I did was to get rid of the drive blank-bay cover with the logo. It needed to look stealth!

Lets just say that I spent lots of time reading every site and magazine under the sun to find a motherboard and processor to suit my needs. This led me to a package deal on eBay for an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 mounted on a Gigabyte EP43 board. The processor was basically what I wanted (within reason) since it was considered to be one of the finest affordable processors at the time, but the board wasn't exactly what I was after. I really wanted the EP45, which was then pretty new and just too expensive. So I settled for the little brother. I then grit my teeth and bought Mushkin RAM, and a 1Tb Seagate drive. I'm not terribly fond of Seagate, but it was on sale, so in it went. The other stuff isn't terribly relevant or interesting so I'll skip it, other than my one weird-o legacy thing, which is my Fujitsu Magneto-Optical drive that lives in it to this day.

 

So, things went along fine for awhile; that is until I came across my friend Pat's old "MythTV"/HTPC build that had been abandoned. One trade later (through a third party), it was mine and inside the case, that computer contained the coveted Gigabyte EP45 board! So a board switch later, "Blackbird" had the MB that had always been planned for it AND I had a home theater PC to boot (albeit with the lesser EP43 MB)! I also bought more Mushkin RAM (Blackline this time) and now I was up to 4Gb in the workstation.

Around this time, I was able to buy a Mushkin Callista 60Gb SSD and "Blackbird" received it's first reload, and let me tell ya....it was fast! A few months down the road, I came across a ATI Radeon 6700 on Craig's List that was selling for $50 so I upgraded from the HIS Radeon 4850 that had been in there.

In the meantime, I also went through a series of upgrades involving the monitors. I had started with my old Acer 20" LCD that was clone of their Acer/Ferrari F20 panel, but I wanted better performance and higher resolution. As luck would have it, I came across a local Craig's List ad for an IBM ThinkVision 17" LCD monitor at $23. Thinking that it would make a good "side/secondary" monitor, I had a friend on that side of the Metroplex pick it up for me. I figured; how bad of a deal can it be for $23! Let's just say that I was a little stunned when he brought it over and the ad turned out to be wrong.....very wrong.....but in a good way! It was a 20" L200p high-res (1600 x 1200) LCD that was top of the line in it's day....wow! Some months later, after being spoiled by the L200p, I started looking for a replacement for the Acer. I'm a little weird with regard to monitors, in the I'll take higher resolution over more size any day, AND I'd really much rather have a better IPS or S-PVA panel to the typical TN as well. After weeks of looking, I found a Lenovo ThinkVision L220x for about $85 shipped. This is where research shows it's importance in frugality. During those weeks of looking, I learned that there weren't a lot of "good" panels out there. Each manufacturer had just a few (sometimes 1 or 2) in their line. The L220x was not only a S-PVA (far superior to TN) panel, but an unusually high resolution for the size (1920 x 1200 in 22"). In general, you have to go to a 24" monitor to get that much real estate. For me, this was perfect since I share office space with my wife and don't have the liberty to go to a really big screen. On top of that bonus, I was able to sell my old Acer for $50 afterward, so the upgrade only cost me about $35 total.I can't emphasize how important it is to upgrade the things that you touch and look at on a computer! 

This state of affairs went along happily for about a year, then this spring I got the itch again when I noticed that the market for SSDs had taken another dip and I could get into one twice the "size" of what I had for the same money. Around the same time, I was able to pick up a Quad core Q6600 as part of package of parts I needed for another build. So reload 2012 occurred with an upgrade in CPU, SSD and more RAM (up to 8Gb). 

This summer the last of the upgrades occurred when my distrust of Seagate drives came to fruition in the form of the 1Tb "scratch-drive" starting to "click" and have write issues. One RMA later, it came back as a new drive, but it went into another (non-frontline) machine. Around that time, Micro Center was having a sale on Hitachi Deskstar 1Tb/7200rpm drives for $79, so I bought one to take the place of the demoted Seagate. Then the Coup 'd Grace arrived in the form of an Intel Core 2 Duo, Q9550 quad core CPU, also bought in a bundle of other parts for a different build. For those who aren't familiar with the entire Core Duo/Core 2 Duo line, the last of the quads known as "Yorkfield" are generally considered special. They much like the C2D, "Wolfdale" E8xxx line, run fast, run cool, are VERY over-clock friendly, plus have very large cache(s) onboard. The "Yorkfield" quad are essentially 2 "Wolfdale" cores on the same die! My "Windows Experience Index" went from 4.6 to 7.2 (out of a possible 7.9) with just that one change in to the system! These chips routinely benchmark within shouting distance of the first generation i5/i7 processors without even overclocking them!

So, essentially, I'm finished. There's really no more progression to upgrade to for Socket 775 motherboards and this machine will be expected to last until some point in the future when I make the jump to the "Ivy-bridge generation". I guess, at that point, the "Blackbird" will fly into the sunset like it's namesake.

World of Laser Printers: Part 2

I left off the last post with a discussion of our "workhorse", the HP LaserJet 4100 equipped with a JetDirect networking card, extra paper tray, and duplexer. Today, I'm going to get into the other half of the equation that makes our printing system here on StaNet complete. 

On occasion everyone needs to make a copy of something. Here in the United States, it's often our drivers licenses, or birth certificates for the kids' sports teams, but it could be any number of things. And of course, no one wants to have a full-blown copier in their house. About 10-15 years ago, the first of the reasonable all-in-ones came out and alleviated that problem. They just make so much sense; printer (usually color inkjet), scanner, copier, all in one rather small unit which not only gives all the functions, but clears precious space. However, with all the goodness comes compromise. Although, most people don't care about the slow and poor quality scans, the one thing that is an issue is the same for virtually all inkjets based devices. The fact is that it's an inkjet! Although there are some things about the technology that reigns supreme, the use of them on a day-to-day sense is not very cost or resource conscious. The fact is, they all dry up over time. I've never used one that didn't. Some are worse than others, but they all do it. Some use ink more heavily and some less so. We have friends that have a Kodak who say that although it doesn't come up to their claims, it is their experience that it does save some money in ink. In my own experience, I've come across nothing that uses up ink quite as fast as an Epson, although the output was always top-notch.

Some years ago, we picked up our first in a long line of HP all-in-ones, and used them first attached to a PC then moved on to networked versions that we could share. The whole time, it was a frustration to pay the $30-45 per cartridge on a regular basis. This was somewhat lessened for us since we didn't print out in color a lot (we had the laser by then) and we bought our cartridges in two-packs at Sam's Club. Still it was incredibly annoying to have put in a cartridge and print little or none, go back several weeks later to find that I needed to put in another to copy something! The cost per page was astronomical!

So, several years ago I tried the first experiment. I bought a used color laser printer: it was an HP Color LaserJet 5, I got it for a great price ($75 plus toner AND an unused set), AND it was HUGE. It wasn't a floor-standing model, but it should have been. I can't even begin to describe to you how big and heavy it was! I could barely lift it and could barely get my arms around it! It printed out beautifully, but DID I SAY THAT IT WAS HUGE, plus it didn't solve the copy need, so I sold it for about what I paid for it. But I was hooked! I knew that I wanted a laser for my color needs as well. I began looking at all-in-ones that were color laser based. Unfortunately, at that time, they we still quite large both in terms of size and $$$, so we kept soldiering along with the inkjet.

About 3-4 years ago, I notice several things were going on; lasers (that worked unlike the LJ1100 series) were getting smaller, Samsung was not only in the market, but they were supplying some of them to HP for the bottom end of the product line and they were doing some color laser all-in-ones! So I started watching them carefully and reading reviews. 

I don't think anyone who's the least bit interested in technology has missed the meteoric rise of the Koreans. They've gone from basically being a 3rd world country and outpost for the American military to dominant status in several key industries in less than 25 years! They've become as threatening to the Japanese industries as the Japanese had been to the American's in the the 70's. Basically, they've out-Japanesed, the Japanese! This has happened in everything from automobile and ship building to high-tech electronics such as cellphones, televisions and computer chips. 

What this led to for me was the Samsung CLX-3175FN, networked, all-in-one color laser printer. Not only does this thing do everything that I had needed from it's inkjet predecessors, it was small, unobtrusive and rather inexpensive. I bought it used for about $200 along with a complete set of unused toner cartridges which by itself was a $100 value! This pretty much completes my networked printer systems and covers the vast majority of my needs. 

The "vast majority"? Well yes: lasers are great, but they don't do photographs very well, so along the way, I've picked up some old Kodak photo printers so I can do quick prints to give people like my daughter's birthday party participants. People still LOVE to have a physical picture to hold in their hands. Eventually, I'd like to have a wide-format photo quality inkjet, so I can do my own printing of framed photos around the house, but that's a creative office reorganization to go and down the road. At this point, all I can say is that I'm extremely satisfied with our network printing system that's available to all computers at all times and doesn't dry up for less than $300 total invested! It was very satisfying the other day to watch my wife who was in her chair in the living room using her laptop on Wi-Fi to send various print jobs to whichever printer suited the purpose while printing out things for her classroom....all without a glitch and my intervention.

Sunday Morning Blog: Happy Vinyl Record Day!

Vinyl Record Day, for those unfamiliar started in San Luis Obispo, California, when the County Board of Supervisors proclaimed August 12th, 2002 to be so named in celebration of Thomas Edison's invention of the phonography on that day in 1877. 

Of course, Edison's device played cylinders which were difficult to handle and store, so it was left to German immigrant Emile Berliner to invent the Gramophone some 10 years later for us to get the disk shaped form that would be dominant for the next 100 years.

If any of you haven't read about the story of Berliner, vs. Edison, it's truly interesting and if not quite as electrifying as the famous AC/DC battle between Edison and Telsa!

Anyway, my purpose this morning isn't to rehash history that any of you can access (more accurately than my retelling) in 10 minutes on the internet, but to celebrate vinyl today. What a perfect way to end my summer. Next week, we go back to work, with the first of many teacher meetings, but today, it's a nice (sub-100 degree) Sunday morning with nothing (kind of) on my plate other than to enjoy a run through Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat", and Steely Dan's "Gold" (because I'm lazy and would rather not play Aja and Goucho). 

If any of you don't have a turntable, I'd encourage you to consider giving it a try. It doesn't have to be something British (the best in my humble opinion) and expensive like the Rega Planars. It could be something like one of the many 70's Japanese turntables like the Technics, Pioneers, and Sonys that can be found with regularity at second hand shops and thrift stores. Some like the famous Technics SL series can still be found in production and considered something of a legend among the younger crowd.

Of course, there is my personal favorite; Dual, for a great price vs. performance balance. You just can't beat German hardware. They make things to last. These can be found in any number of places, but you'll have to be careful since many of them are the heavily mechanical "rim-drive" that can have gummed up lubrication or degraded drive tires. It's much easier to replace an old belt on the "belt-drive" versions. Also, you'll need to make sure you get the important "headshell" with it. There were a number of different versions made and you'll have to use the correct one with the particular turntable. 

Not only is listening to vinyl records enjoyable and relaxing, it can be a hobby within a hobby, which doesn't need to be expensive. Records are often encountered at "garage sales" (here in the states) or "boot sales" (England). They can often be found at thrift stores, but you'll just have to check carefully on condition, but my favorite is our local Half Price Books stores. They just have a lot of stock, the price is fair, and the condition is usually very good. You can on occasion find an outstanding example like my mint condition Mobile Fidelity "Year of the Cat" for $8!

What? .....no "Phono" input on your receiver? As I discussed in a previous post about my A/V system, I bought one that did, but I have an even better solution. Above is an image of my Sony STR-AV770, that cost about $25. That's right, $25! I picked it up on eBay, which is over-run with old receivers. The fact is, mainstream Japanese firms of the 70's and 80's that took over the market made VERY good gear which rarely broke. Most of them have "Phono" inputs (some even have 2), and many are still working great. The secret here is to buy the receivers: leave the seprates (amps, pre-amps) to the collectors. They're too expensive. Then search for one in your area through the "advanced search" function. When you find one or more, contact the seller to ask if they will allow for a "local pickup". The issue is that quite often, it costs as much (or more) to ship these things as to buy them, and most sellers will be happy not to mess with that part. I guarantee, if you are patient and near any metropolitan area, you can find one for close to the price I paid for mine (applies to U.S. readers only of course...sorry). A hidden benefit is that these old receiver often sound better than they used to when connected to modern speakers! Of course, you'll need to carefully test it first by using an old pair of speakers before hooking it up to your pride and joy! Remember they are often 20+ years old by now!

Then of course; next year on August 12th, aka Vinyl Record Day, you can be doing what I am....computer in your lap.....optional.

World of the LaserJet: Part 1

Many years ago, when I first started teaching, I had a bad case of techno-lust for one of these.....the HP DeskJet 500C. That "C" was very important since it meant that this was one of the few printers of that time which could print in color, AND it was affordable.....kind of.....at just under $500 (in 1988 dollars)! I remember so clearly standing there in the Office Depot in Lubbock watching the demonstration of it printing out in amazing color! But alas, it would be many years till I would be able to afford one. 

In the up-to-date printing world of that day, the other option was the laser printer. Of course, these things were well north of $1000 like the above Apple LaserWriter II, but the output was unbelievably crisp for that day.

So fast forward ten years or so, and several printers (including a truly awful Epson that rarely picked up one sheet of paper at a time and went through ink like it was going out of style), but I never forgot what I really wanted: a separate laser printer for crisp (and cheap) black and white, plus a color inkjet for the rare occasions when that was necessary. One day, while nosing around in a pawn shop in Lubbock, I ran across an HP LaserJet 5p. It was sitting in the "As Is" section of the store and upon questioning, the sales folks indicated that it didn't have a a connector for a "regular" computer. I was more than a little suspicious of this and on further investigation (opening the side panel) found that the previous owner had put a parallel (normal) to serial (not normal) adapter on to the I/O connector! After I got back with my laptop to test it out to make sure it worked, I got the price down to $75 and bought it. In fact, we used this printer for over 3 Years before I needed to replace the toner cartridge!

This turn of events is what really gets me started on the topic of the day. That laser printers in general and Hewlett Packard "office" type LaserJets specifically are such a great deal, they're almost a must have in the modern home. We'll start with the premise that computers have not only NOT eliminated paper, they've generated a higher use of it. I'm not going to get into the philosophy of it, but suffice to say that it's a truth. Of course we're probably worse than most because my wife is an elementary school teacher so she routinely needs to print things out for school. If we did this on the inkjet that the typical consumer has, we'd literally and figuratively be awash in "red ink"!

There's a reason why they sell the printers at practically "give-away" prices. It's those $45 cartridges that they know you'll be buying at least every other if not every month! Usually there are at least two of them per printer, AND they tend do dry out to one degree or another whether you're using them or not. Think about this: even if you average just $50 per month, you are spending about $600 a year on those little cartridges! I thought we were doing pretty good when we had the black and white only laser that printed out 90% of our needs, but those few times when we needed color it almost always required new cartridges because the old ones were dried up! What to do?

So let start with our current HP LaserJet 4100dtn (those letters mean something). But what about the 5p, you say? Trying to find the perfect deal in a pawn shop is not a great strategy, so we'll work with one that pretty much anyone can replicate. This is the machine that replaced the 5p which has gone on to another life with a family member. This type of printer (LJ 4100) includes a whole series that are generally known as "workgroup" printers and sell to the business community by the 10's if not 100's of thousands. Those of you who read this blog on a regular basis know where I'm going with this, right? Kind of like the printer version of ThinkPads and Dell laptops and PCs! First of all, these are well-built, heavy-duty machines that are designed to last and be worked on easily. HP, which is hugely dominant in the business printer world can't afford to get a black eye with a bad product! These are also physically the largest that most people would be willing to put into their homes. Of course, like anything else in the computing world, they are updated and replaced on a regular basis, whether they need it or not. The new ones get faster, have more features, etc and so on..... This series started long before the 4100 and currently is a couple of models past it. So why the 4100? 

Dratted Microsoft of course, that's why! When M$ went to Windows 7, it obsoleted hardware by the hundreds because there were no updated drivers. However, the 4000 series were just above the "cut-off". All of that Series; 4000, 4050, 4100 could use the 4100 drivers built right into the OS! Why else the LaserJet 4****? Did I forget to say that they are cheap? I bought 2, locally for $70! And no, I wasn't just super-lucky. These things can be found routinely with the slightest bit of patience for $50 or less locally. One even had a 50% full toner cartridge in it! But the big pay-off.....is that they typically come with a JetDirect Network card installed, and if not, they are a direct plugin and cheap on eBay.

Say what, a "Jet" what? Yeah; that's a network card (usually Ethernet), that allows the thing to be plugged right to the router or switch at home so everybody can use it! So, there's the pay-off, a 15-25 pager per minute business printer capable of 1200 x 1200 dpi that you can print to from anywhere in your house, for about $50! How's that for a deal! 

But what about paying $75-125 for toner cartridges? First of all, do the math; even if you walked into an office supply and paid full pop for an original HP branded cartridge that'll run you $100 (give or take), it's something like one every 2 to 4 years for a typical user. The cost per page isn't even comparable. But, for home users, I think I'd recommend just going to eBay, do a search on "remanufactured" or refilled cartridges from a supplier with a great feedback rating and use that. They can be had for around $25 each. Or you can use my method of watching the local Craig's List or eBay listing for an ad listing my cartridge from the original manufacturer that's cheap. Remember, they last 2 to 4 years so you can afford to be patient. I've paid, anywhere from $20-30 for OEM fully sealed toner cartridges over the years, which I think is pretty good. I always keep a spare on hand so I don't end up having to run out and buy one in a panic because I'm out.

 

Are there any "gotchas"? Sure there are, these things are used, so you have to make sure that they it's working well. That means you have to know enough about the printer fire it up and get to the menu functions to make it print out the configuration page, so you can see how many pages it's printed, what the IP address is, and how much toner is left (on some models). The one that's most intimidating is probably getting it on the network. In most cases, you'll need to do what's known as a "cold reset" which can be found by Googling the for that, plus the model number which should pull up the HP instructions for the machine. What that'll do is wipe the IP address and have the printer get a new one from your network DHCP server (in your router). Then print out the config page again and get that IP address. Once you have that, all you need to do is to do the printer install from Windows with a "new" port, choose standard TCP/IP, put in the correct address, pick and correct drivers and you are good to go! Now, just run around do that with all your computers and everyone can print. 

Now, if you really want to be sophisticated, you can go to your router and give the printer a static IP address, but that's up to you. Just understand that if you don't do that, every time your printer (or router) shuts down for any reason, it'll probably give it a new address and you have to reset your computers or they won't be able to print.

I'll leave Part 1 at that for now, but stay tuned for Part 2 where I'll talk more about these "workgroup" printers and the other half of my network printing solution here at the house.