Why Can't Stuff Just Work?

This morning I received a work e-mail indicating that something is broken with a system over which I am responsible. I quickly went to work troubleshooting the issue. I used AI to help me comb through our system documentation and found a number of possible leads on how to solve the issue. I threw it out to the people reporting the problem only to discover our documentation is incorrect. I had to go back to square one.

I'm trying to solve the issue at work when I get a text from my wife who can't get the new toner cartridges to work at the office. That shouldn't really bother me as I'm not paid to help troubleshoot her office computer problems. Unfortunately we have the same printer at home and I just bought the same toner cartridges for ours. While I don't need them to work now, I will in the future. Furthermore today is the 31st day after I received them from Amazon which means I am past the 30-day return window.

Now two problems to solve in the same day shouldn't be a problem. Any mother with a 4-year old knows that is the first 10 minutes of every day. However I try to ensure all of my technologies stay working and don't break down. Discovering you need to print something important only to have new toner cartridges not recognized might lead to panic and expletives. Fortunately my wife discovered that problem early.

To address the issue at work, I gathered more information and looked at possible solutions. Then I made sure not to commit to anything on the behalf of others. If I can fix something, then I can commit. If the solution involves others, I can't speak for their time. This keeps others from committing my time. It looks like we will need to have network engineers involved in the solution and so I need to make my notes available and let others solve the problem.

For the printer, I exchanged a number of messages with my wife. She was unable to get her printer working but succeeded in returning her work toner cartridges to Amazon. So I gave them a call. I explained the process she went through and how I have the same printer and would rather return unopened product which might be resold to someone that can use them. The Amazon customer service agent looked up the details of my purchase and immediately agreed to allow me to return them for a full refund.

Now the only problem is that my printer is almost out of toner and I need to order replacement cartridges. HP makes my printer and they have gotten wise to Chinese manufacturers selling compatible toner for half the price. To combat it, they require a special chip in new cartridges and regularly update printer firmware to reject any toner than their own. If you want to ensure your printer will continue to work, you have to buy new cartridges from HP. Yes they are more expensive but at least they should work, right? I sure hope so cause it is really expensive.

Time For a New Printer

I don't think a home printer is necessary unless you are used to having one. Over a decade ago I bought a Samsung color laser printer. It worked for a few years and then the ink started bleeding all over the pages. I thought new toner cartridges would fix the issue and they did for about 5 pages. Then the bleeding started again. We have limped along with the printer for a few years but my wife decided it needed to be replaced.

I did not do a lot of research about what to replace the old printer with. Instead I did what a lot of other people do and selected it from Costco. I really just went to the store on our monthly trip and wandered over to the electronics section to see what printers they had in stock. When I asked my wife if we should pick one up, she wouldn't let me leave the section until we had one in our cart.

At Costco there are really only 2 selections: a color laser printer from HP or a color inkjet printer from Epson. Both are great printer companies and neither is a bad choice. My son has the inkjet printer and thinks it is great. My wife suggested it based on his recommendation as well as the significant price difference. Unfortunately for my needs, the inkjet wasn't going to cut it. I often print maps on waterproof paper and the instructions that came with the paper say it only works with laser printers. If you think about it, it makes sense. Laser printers melt little plastic beads onto the paper while inkjets spray liquid ink. Waterproof paper will not accept the ink and I imagine it makes quite the mess.

I hefted the 45 pound HP LaserJet Pro MFP 3301cdw into our cart which effectively limited what other purchases we could make that day. I still ended up with a $750 bill as the printer came in at $400 before tax. We brought the new toy home and let it sit in the living room for a couple of days. Eventually I summoned the strength to move it downstairs into my basement office.

The new HP printer does more than print. It is also a scanner, fax machine, and copier. The one machine allowed me to remove my 30-year old copier from my office as well as my scanner and old Samsung printer. I have no need for a fax anymore and threw my old one away more than a decade ago. I now have a lot more table space in my office, which is a good thing.

Setting up the printer went something like this: pull the printer out of the box, plug in the power cable, plug in a network cable, set the date and time, open the printer app on any computer in the house, scan for new printers, and the printer could print. I didn't have to do anything special as it just worked. Today my wife needed to scan a document. Because the printer was set up, the scanner was too. She put the document in the sheet feeder on top and open the scan application on her laptop. Then she needed to select the "use sheet feeder" option to automatically suck the page into the scanner bed. It saved the document as a PDF file in her Pictures directory on her Mac.

The new printer installation took significantly less time than I thought it would. It works with all the computers in the house. For those that don't have network cables lying around, The printer also works on WiFi and has a touchscreen to help set that up.

Again, I don't think a home printer is necessary. But once you have had one, it is tough not to. My wife and I love the new HP and look forward to documents where the colors don't run together. 

Not a Fan of Samsung Laser Printers

Before I thrash on Samsung, I have to point out that I work for Sony and the two companies compete with each other in a number of areas. That means my opinion is not unbiased. Fortunately I am not writing about a product that Sony makes and so I hope this comes across as a bit more objective.

Several years ago I needed a color laser printer. I had gotten tired of using color inkjet printers and wanted to try the laser technology. I shopped around and found a great deal on a Samsung CLP-315W printer. It worked as expected for a while and then the print quality went downhill. I tried cleaning the printer and various other solutions. The one that actually worked was replacing the toner cartridges. Then it started working great again.

I am getting low on toner and so I looked at getting new cartridges. Samsung recommends using only theirs, as you would expect and so I looked all over the Internet to get name-brand replacement cartridges. I found some on Amazon and ordered them. It surprised me when they shipped out of the UK but I waited patiently for them to arrive. They showed up a week later and I immediately loaded them into the printer. They didn't work at all.

Any time something doesn't work on the first try, I do a bit of Internet searching and make sure it is not a user error. I found a number of articles that talk about resetting the page counter. I thought that might be necessary and then I discovered how to get the page count via the printer's web interface. I just had to know the IP address of my printer and point my browser at it. The page counter showed me that each of the cartridges had no pages printed but also that the cartridges didn't have any toner. After playing around with the printer for a week, I decided to send the cartridges back.

Amazon is a great place to order stuff because of their return policy. The catch is if they send you something from abroad. In order to get my refund, I had to ship them back to the UK and was only allotted  $20 for shipping. While Amazon may be able to ship overseas for that price, it cost me significantly more than that. While I will get some of my money back, I am out $60 because of shipping costs to return the defective toner cartridges. I have learned my lesson with Amazon and will not order anything from overseas ever again. I am actually going to cut back what I order from them because of this experience.

So now I am stuck with a laser printer that either needs to be replaced or I need to find replacement cartridges for it. My gut feel is to take to the top of a really tall cliff and watch it explode after I throw it off the top. Unfortunately the responsible person in me doesn't want to have to find the million little pieces it will become as leaving any of them is littering. E-wasting the printer is probably more socially responsible.

I could also try off-brand cartridges but am not sure that is the right choice as I have not had great luck with them. My experience is that they work for about half the life of the cartridge and then the print quality starts suffering. I really would like to get the full life out of whatever I purchase.

Ultimately I am thinking of finding another brand of printer that doesn't have nearly as many problems as I have had with my Samsung. I have always had great luck with Hewlett Packard printers and may pay the premium for their product. At least I know their printers work when you replace their toner cartridges.

A Late Christmas List

Normally I am much more together and have my Christmas Gift Idea list put together long before now. This year I have been procrastinating it. Part of the reason is that I have pretty much all of the material possessions I could want. Getting more just means I have to find a place for it all. My house is overflowing with stuff to the point that it is time to start getting rid of some of it. Perhaps it might help you to know what things I would keep as I mentally catalog my computer equipment.

One of my favorite gadgets is my color laser printer. You can find them for around $200 and I highly recommend one. A lot of people don't print because they think it is bad for the environment. I agree but sometimes you need to print something and if you are going to use a sheet of paper, you might as well print it in color. In this day and age, I think a black-and-white printer is a waste of money. There is probably a joke in there about how it will practically print money. Just don't try that at home or the secret service will come after you.

Sticking with the theme of printers, my next favorite gadget is my 3D printer. If you have someone on your Christmas list that loves building prototypes or playing with computer aided drawing (CAD) programs, a 3D printer should be on your list. They can get rather expensive and so I only recommend one if you can get away with a less-expensive model. I still enjoy my Creality Ender 3 and think it is a great beginner printer. I must confess though that my son uses it more than I do but that is why I got it.

My next recommendation would be for dual monitors if you have someone on your list that doesn't already have them. While in Japan this past week I did not have the luxury of dual monitors on my laptop and I really missed it. With a bit of searching you can find a second monitor that will work with most computers for only around $120. I suggest a minimum resolution of 1920x1080p. All of my computers have dual monitors at work and at home.

Another peripheral that is often overlooked is a USB CD/DVD/Blu-ray disc drive. My last several laptops have not had internal drives and that is fine most of the time. However every once and a while you really need one and when you do, you need it badly. I have one that I keep on my desk at home and another one that I have in my office at work. They both come in handy every so often.

Finally I have one more recommendation for those of you that might have a really tight Christmas-gift budget. I do not have enough phone charger cables. I use USB-C for one of my phones and a Lightning connector for the other. I carry all sorts of spares and am amazed at how many times other people need to borrow them. On occasion I need them too. A couple of each would make great stocking stuffers.

I don't think there is any big surprise in this list. Perhaps you might not think about how important a color laser printer is or how useful a spare phone charging cable can be. My experience has taught me that they are and you really miss them when you don't have them.

My New Favorite Website

This coming week I will be heading out on another adventure. My son reserved a yurt (a very sturdy tent with a wood-burning stove and bunk beds) in the Uinta Mountains and we will be skiing to it. Once we get there, we will have a nice dinner and a relaxing evening. Then the next day we will hike around to some peaks in the area and ski down them. It should make for a fabulous adventure assuming the avalanche danger doesn't thwart us from making the trip.

My son came over this evening so we could plan out some details for the trip. I pulled out my map of the area and discovered that the scale of my map is just too small for where we will going. I wanted a much larger map with more detail and so my son sent me to CalTopo.com. Then I just zoomed in on the map until I had the right detail for the area we will be visiting.

Next I added a marker on the map with the GPS coordinates of where the yurt is located. That took a bit of conversion as I had degrees, minutes, and seconds but CalTopo wants just degrees with following decimals. Fortunately that just took a quick change in the configuration and I had my marker and label.

I wanted to print a very detailed map and so I decided 2 maps would be helpful. One for the hike in and the second for the mountains to the south of the yurt. The second map will be for our skiing. I easily created a PDF of both maps and then printed them on my color laser printer.

Right now I can just put the maps in a zip-loc bag and not worry about them getting wet. In the future I would like to have maps printed on waterproof paper and so I did a quick Internet search. Sure enough, there are a number of sources for the stuff and so I ordered 500 sheets of "Rite in the Rain" paper. I had a $20 gift card for the online store I used and so it only cost me another $50. It should pay for itself in no time at all because I use a lot of maps for my numerous adventures.

I'm pretty excited about the upcoming trip and being able to find detailed information is very helpful. That makes CalTopo.com my new favorite website.