Check your kids feet and cables!

Its amazing what kids feet get up to! How many times were you told to sit up straight at school at home and not to rock your chair as you will damage it? I used to regularly get a clip round the ear hole as a kid (Long Long time ago) for not sitting properly in a chair. Its something we all do until we have fallen over backwards a few times and got sick of being told off.

I was in a friends office the other day both the printer and the Internet were suddenly not working. Why is it that when you let your kids near a piece of business equipment it never works the same again? was the cry from a hassled Dave. He explained that his teenage son had persuaded him against his better judgement to allow him to use one of his business PC's to print some home work off on. He had been told not to alter any settings or paramiters and seemed well pleased with what he created. However by "just sitting" at the PC it had effected the printer and internet. I will kill him when I get hold of him was the parental summing up.

Ever anxious to avert blood shed I remeberd a similar occurence in my own office, Alex who canot sit on a chair properly if his life depended on it, had done his usual trick of sitting on a tilted chair with his feet straight out on the wall under the desk. We later discoverd after much serching that his feet had pulled out the modem cable to the computer he had been using.

I recollected this story to Dave who promptly dived under the desk and said "BINGO", his son had done exactly the same thing. Simply plugging the printer cable and the internet router power supply back in restored normal service. So next time anything connected to your computer suddenly decides not to work, check where your kids feet have been litteraly.

The moral is!!!!!!! Sitting properly saves parents a lot of angst, off spring a lot of ear bending, and potentially a big bill from the Computer repair man.

Mum was right all along. I SIT CORRECTED.

One way of making your Laser printer unhappy!

Do you ever start something and wish you had not? This morning and my haste cost me dearly. We needed some labels printing quickly so I thought in my befuddled state, Laser printer it is quickest. Wrong!

If you are not aware ( I am supposidly) the way that laser printers work uses a lot of heat and hence if you repeat my earlier decision, and put "Sticky Backed Labels" through a Laser printer. The heat from the machine melts the glue and the labels end up all over the inside of your printer, it then starts flashing lights at you, puts a warning message up on the screen about a paper jam and is generally unhappy!

You then follow the instruction book ( that thing we all file under L for later, and cannot find at times like this). It tells you how to clear a paper jam, you open up the printer and pull out the mangled sheet of labels and then spend the next 2 hours with a pair of fine tweezers picking bits of sticky label off all of the drums and rollers inside your printer. This was a rush job remember, and my wife says her fine tweezers have been ruined in the bargain.

So after printing more labels on our slower? inkjet printer and dispatching the urgent orders, on making some enquirys it appears that you can buy special Laser Printer friendly sticky labels which are now on order.

So the morale is "DO NOT PUT STICKY LABELS INTO LASER PRINTERS" UNLESS THEY ARE OF THE APPROVED VARIETY.

This also applies to other printing medium and some papers so if in doubt please check that what you are about to print on is ok for use in a laser printer, you will save alot of hassle and potentionaly big repair bills.

Being Jizzed and running out of one colour of ink

Do you ever feel jizzed? A friend of my wifes used exactly this term to me the other day, she had bought a new set of ink jet printer cartridges for her HP printer ( from me), so I could not escape the forth coming comments.

They went like this " I am sick of replacing the colour cartridge in my printer every month a black one seems to last for ever". Upon asking what she was printing I got a stare across the top of her wine glass ( they are both teachers, if you are a teacher you will understand) that cannot be described. Things she said! what else do you print.

Well what sort of things I asked , Photos, colour pictures off the web? Well school stuff, planning, work sheets I have designed was the reply. At this I got the drift, work sheets some times contain a lot of pictures and are often printed in coloured ink, which is proably why my wife uses my office colour laser printer to print hers. It came out that she had been printing every thing in Blue for lessons on the sea.

At this I smilled and got another look, and then explained that the colour cartridge in her printer had the 3 primary colours in it in equal amounts and the cartridge cleverly mixed the inks to print what ever colours you want to print. So if you print a lot of print in say Yellow you will empty the cartridge of Yellow ink and even though the other two colours are proabley barely used, you have to buy another cartridge. The printer will not work if it has run out of one colour and also needs a black cartridge with ink in it.

The look across the top of the wine glass changed with realisation of what had happend. So if you do a lot of printing in one colour, buy a printer which has seperate ink tanks for each colour, so you only replace the colours you have used.

This also explained why one of my customers complained of a "faulty cartridge" that had run out of red ink very quickly, once she had asked her kids what they had been printing, he daughter admited that she had printed off an essay for school in red, several A4 sheets.

So now you know, if your colour cartridge does not seem to last as long as you think it should, think about what you or other people have printed off on your printer.

It is sunny outside and I have had enough of bashing a keyboard, more next time. Enjoy your weekend.

What has Chocolate got to do with the Humble Printer Cartridge?

It's all Jodie my book keepers fault, she explained to me a fact I was vaguely aware of, namely that ladies have to eat chocolate, men do not. A fact my wife would've said was obvious - and talking to other friends it seems there is some truth in this statement. I mean think about it, is any man brave/stupid enough to try and deprive a woman of chocolate? Amazing isn't it. An obvious thing we just take for granted all these years and then bang the penny drops!. Am I slow on the uptake or what?

But what's this to do with printer cartridges? Well, now the penny has finally dropped I thought that all my female customers might like a FREE BAR of chocolate with their printer cartridge order, as a thank you for their business. So until my vast stock of chocolate runs out we are giving away a FREE BAR of chocolate with every order to female customers.

A friend who runs a promotional company (yes, she is a women) thinks it could be one of my best ideas yet. She has sampled the goods, purely as a matter of research and pronounced it up to the mark and fit for the purpose. I did't ask for what purpose exactly, Lynn does have some, lets say, different ideas on some things.

Printer Cartridges that look different and Car exhausts!

Do you ever say something and assume that every one else knows what you're on about? I did the other day and my customer pointed out that although I knew what I was on about, she didn't. Jane is the kind of lady you take notice of when she speaks as it 's generally worth listening to, full of common sense and real world attitude.

Jane had come to me for a printer ink cartridge for her Brother printer and my reply was "Yes of course we can supply for that model", I supplied her with a compatible cartridge that fits her printer. It looks a bit different but we know they work fine and alot of our customers ask for them by name. Jane looked at the cartridge I had given her and said, "Are you sure this is correct it looks different to my last cartridge?". I then explained that a Brand New compatible cartridge is just that, a brand new printer ink cartridge not made by the printer manufacturer that fits the printer and costs a lot less than the original printer ink cartridge.

My comparison was "You would proably not go to the main dealers if you wanted an exhaust fitting to your car, you would go to a tyre and exhaust outlet because of the big saving on cost". You would get an exhaust fitted that did the job perfectly but did not have the vehicle manufacturers label on it. Think of compatible printer ink cartridges in the same way, a brand new printer ink cartridge, they fit your printer, print the same amount of pages, give excellent print quality and save you money.

After this Jane smiled, paid her bill and went happily on her way. I did get an e-mail from her later in the day telling me that she had fitted the compatible printer ink cartridge, and although it looked slightly different her printer was happy and printing just the same as before. So if you are supplied with a cartridge that looks slightly different, and you are sure it is designed to fit your printer try it, many of my customers have and now ask for them by name.

To finish with, it's a fabulous day outside my office and I wish I could be out in the sunshine, have a nice day those of you who can enjoy it. And I'm looking forward to that beer tonight, Richard.

Save yourself money clean and clear the printhead!

To carry on the theme of my last post, how many people have gone to print something after a break and found their printer won't print? Infuriating isn't it to get back to work having motivated yourself to do so after a break (I personally find getting going again a herculian task!) typed your work and found the printer will not print. A good Monday morning feeling and often it is not Monday morning.

A lot of people automaticaly think "I need a new printer ink cartridge" and go and spend up to £50.00 or £60.00 unnecesarily. Some will even have found the printer instruction book(that's the book that comes with a new printer that we all file under "L FOR LATER") and gone through the print head cleaning procedure all to no avail.

However there is another way, which in 85% of cases (on HP, Canon and Lexmark printer ink cartridges) saves you rushing down to the shops to spend some more hard earned money.

As I said in my last post, ink is mainly water and it evaporates. When this happens to a printer ink cartridge, it leaves a residue on the printhead and clogs it up. Hence it is blocked and will not allow ink through to print, which also causes poor printing quality. In my experience 85% of cases can be cured by gently wiping the bottom of the printer ink cartridge, the bit with the copper looking strip on the bottom of the cartridge, with a rectangular shape in the middle of it, on a piece of kitchen towel moistened in warm water. By gently doing this you moisten the dried up deposits on the bottom of the printer ink cartrige and un-clog it.

As you wipe the bottom of the cartridge you will see the ink starting to soften and come off onto your kitchen roll. After 2 or 3 wipes blot the bottom of the printer ink cartridge on a dry piece of kitchen towel and you will see it starting to pull through the ink - on black cartridges you will get an oval/egg shaped blot of ink and on colour cartridges you will get 3 strips/ovals of colour ink. You get 3 colours in a colour cartridge because they mix the 3 primary colours to get the colour you want.

A WORD OF WARNING!
WHEN CARRYING OUT THE ABOVE PROCEDURE ONLY USE A MODERATELY DAMPEND PIECE OF KITCHEN TOWEL ON THE BOTTOM OF THE PRINTER CARTRIDGE AND ALWAYS MAKE SURE THE PRINTER CARTRIDGE IS COMPLETELY DRY BEFORE PUTTING IT BACK IN YOUR PRINTER.

The reson for this warning is that the electrical contacts for your printer cartridge are on the side of the cartridge just above the print head you are cleaning.

I hope the above saves you some money and time wasting, it has surprised a lot of my customers who have come to me for a new cartridge and been told they do not need one. They just need to clean the cartridge bottom to get rid of the dried on ink.

Please post comments or contact me by e-mail if you require information for a specific application, or are just having a problem getting your printer to work properly and I will do my best. More useful information next time.