Category: stuff

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Going through the ink…

Though modern printers are cheap as chips, the ink costs are usually astronomical. My new printer is no exception, though one reason I did purchase it was because it had separate ink cartridges rather than the usual one black and one colour that lower end printers have.

The Canon MG7752 printer comes with, what are called, setup cartridges, I have no idea how different these are to the regular ones, but having got the printer at the end of March they started to run out this month, July.

Canon MG7752

As well as regular document printing, it is also used quite a lot to print photographs, the second 6×4 paper tray makes that simple and easy to do from either the Mac or from the iPhone.

The printer has two black cartridges, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and also uses a specialised Grey cartridge too.

The printer can take regular cartridges, which I am assuming contain more ink that the setup ones. There are also XL high yield cartridges which according to the marketing hype deliver twice the pages of a regular cartridge.

The first setup cartridge to run out was the double sized black cartridge which is used for black and white output. This lasted from the end of March to the beginning of July, just over three months. The colours started to run out in the third week of July starting with the Cyan, followed by the Magenta, then the Yellow and then the Grey. The other black cartridge still has ink in.

I bought XL versions of the colour cartridges so it will be interesting to see how long they last. Challenging to measure effectively as the printing usage patterns in the house vary quite some bit. However by posting this post I hope to have some kind of record of how long the cartridges last.

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The printer is dead again…

Canon MP600r

After ten years service, my Canon MP600R finally had to be retired after the print head failed. Back in 2012 my HP Photosmart printer failed for a similar reason.

I liked the MP600R for many different reasons, printing photographs, fast printing of documents, printing CDs and DVDs. It was a decent scanner (not the fastest) and I also liked the ability to print direct from the Compact Flash memory cards that I used in my Canon DSLR.

The main symptom of the failure was the main black cartridge would not print. Despite replacing the cartridge, cleaning the print head, both using the printer utility and even following some obscure guidelines from YouTube washing the print head under the tap as a last resort.

I would have been happy to replace the print head, but the cost of a replacement was around £150 and even then I wasn’t sure if it would have fixed the issue.

So in the end decided that the only real option was to replace the printer.

Looking over what printers were available, I started to make a list of features that I wanted and needed when printing. I realised that my printing needs have changed quite a bit since I bought the MP600R.

For example, printing CDs and DVDs which was quite a high priority back then, is still an useful feature, but not as much as a priority now for me.

Whereas AirPrint or the ability to print from iOS devices, which at the time I got the MP600R we didn’t have the iPad or even the iPhone. Today using those devices much more for communication means the ability to print from my phone or iPad is now a key feature I need from my printer.

I certainly wanted wireless printing (and scanning) for other devices too.

Looking over the products available I in the end went with the Canon MG7752 all-in-one Wireless Printer.

Canon MG7752

This had the key features I needed as well as some nice features that I didn’t. It has two paper trays, one for A4 paper and one for 4” x 6” photographic papers. It also had NFC capability, which I believe works great with Android phones, but not with iOS, typical! I also managed to get £30 off too, which was nice. Oh and yes it is that colour too!

The printer was much easier to install and configure than MP600R and I was even able to do that from a mobile device. It was also really nice to be able to install the printer on a range of Mac and Windows devices around the house.

The only issue I did have was that the Canon My Image Garden software wouldn’t work with the default OS X Canon print drivers, even if the printer would print. This means you can’t easily scan or print printable CDs and DVDs. The solution is to install the Canon drivers from the Canon website, once done everything worked as expected.

Print quality was excellent as was speed of printing, so much faster than the MP600R.

Overall the Canon MG7752 is an excellent replacement for the MP600R and I hope it lasts nearly as long as the printer it replaced.

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Will we get Virgin Media cable?

Weston Village by James Clay

On the other side of the village…

I like how Weston call their new housing developments villages, this conjures up images of a village green, a local post office, a pub and a red phone box.

Reality is that this is a modern housing estate, though has to be said with an ancient communication infrastructure relying on old copper cables!

It is no surprise that when builders come in and build a new housing estate they provide electricity, gas, water and sewage, but when it comes to connectivity, they fall back to the trusted copper cables.

Why when a new housing estate is built they can’t install fibre straight in, I will never know. Though recent press reports indicate that this may now happen… only taken ten years.

But back to the other side of the village, across the main railway line which splits the village (we do get steam trains on that line, but this isn’t Titfield Thunderbolt railway lines, no this is high speed GWR and CrossCountry) we have seen Virgin Media come in, dig up the roads and pavements and install Virgin cabling to the houses there.

There isn’t much to discover on the web about Virgin Media and what will be available, according to the website, they say it’s not in their plans… seems strange to spend lots of money on the infrastructure to connect homes, but never actually connect them up! I expect it will be available shortly, and I wonder what sort of stuff will be on their fibre cables? In some parts of Bristol for example, we have 200Mbs connections, though I think that Virgin would also like you to take their TV packages as well, something that puts me off them, as I don’t watch that much live TV and prefer BBC iPlayer, Netflix or Amazon Prime.

What has got me wondering, now they have installed cable on the other side of the village, will they cross the railway line and do our side of the village, will they get us some decent internet connectivity, as BT Openreach have consistently failed to do so. There are some CATV covers quite close (and on our side of the railway line) but not sure if they are anything to do with Virgin Media, or even if they are related to any possible roll out of Virgin Media Cable.

Of course no news on the Virgin Media website, so we shall have to wait and see.

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Do you want to know how to send e-mail?

Do you want to know how to send e-mail?

In 1984 this was not as easy as it is now, but luckily we had the Thames TV programme Database to tell us how.

Also watch the end for a data transmission for the BBC Micro, you could record to a tape recorder (or VCR) and then load onto your computer using a tape player!