Day: June 20, 2011

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Avoid This Printer

I don’t usually dump all over a piece of hardware, but I’ll make an exception in the case of the HP Deskjet F4580 AIO. I bought the thing because I read the wrong reviews, apparently. Oh, boy did I! *sigh* Nice, thought I: a wireless-enabled printer by HP, a company whose printers I’d always had good experiences with in the past. Cool. That way, I wouldn’t have to leave a computer on and connected to the network with printer sharing enabled in order for users on the network to print to it.

Besides, it looked like it’d save desk space, given that I’d be able to scan documents as well. (Sure, we have a couple of other scanners, but again, to not have to have it connected to a computer… and the space issue.)

I should just have bought a device to connect our 13-year-old, failing, HP workhorse printer to the network. I’d have gotten better service. Sure, the printer was failing, but still…

Oh, when it prints, it prints very nicely. When it scans, it does that nicely too. But. Keeping it connected is a PITA. Sometimes, the only thing that I’ve been able to do to get it to connect is to completely uninstall the thing (and the humongous software package that should NOT be required to install the printer) and then reinstall it. Again and again and again.

Router shows it’s connected? Nope. The printer isn’t. Print a document and the print queue shows it’s printing? Nope. Not until the thing’s turned off and then turned on again. A whole mess of things like that. HP’s diagnostic utilities and installation wizard and cleanup utility? All junk. Utter, completely useless crap.

Oh, and did I mention that we’d scarcely printed 10 pages of text (all black ink) before the damned thing (yes, I think it was designed and manufactured by demons in hell) was reporting both cartridges nearly empty?

I was already POed at HP for some of its crappy notebooks/netbooks it’s shoved out the door recently, but this thing takes the cake. The other day, it performed a partial print of a document four times before it printed the whole thing. And I’d cleared the print queue each time it tried and failed to print the thing and did not resubmit the document at all.

What a PITA.

Oh, and the scanning? Yeh, still pretty much need to have the nearest computer on, since one has to place the document to be scanned and it’s far easier to control the scanning from a nearby computer (wirelessly, there’s pretty much only one way: via the web interface; that’s not the way it’s supposed to be, but invoking the scanning facility via one’s graphics software or even the HP imaging software has about a 50/50 chance of working at best). Of course, since most printing/scanning away from my desk is from notebooks, bringing one in and doing the scanning (via the web interface) would let me leave the always nearby compy off, I guess…

All in all, aside from the demonically-engineered and manufactured piece of crap dropping its wireless connection willy-nilly all the freakin’ time, the sheer clunkiness of the thing is irritating.

Avoid it.

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Tightwad Electrical

OK, I’m a patzer in the area of electrical work (OK, perhaps just lacking the practice necessary to own a high level of skill, ‘K? :-)). I know that. It means, for one thing, that I work very, very slowly when working with electrical wiring, etc. BTDT as a young kid with the live socket thingy. *heh* It also means… tools. As in, my better tools are designed for car mechanicking, plumbing and wood working.

The “proper” tools for doing electrical work are fairly expensive. I’m talking about the screwdrivers and pliers, etc. (I have circuit testers that work for the simple electrical circuits I work on around the house. Yeh, they’re overkill, but I’ve also found them useful for electronics stuff.) Since the electrical work I have planned will end when everything at twc central’s finished, I didn’t want to spend $20 for a pair of pliers, etc., but just have some tools that’d do the job–safely. Of course, almost all of it could be done with uninsulated tools as long as I were pretty darned careful (shut down circuits, etc.), but rewiring electrical panels w/o detaching the meter (detach meter=get the electrical company pi$$ed off at me) does require working around some hot lines, so…

Bought some new, cheap-a$$ed tools and wrapped the handles with some self-fusing silicone/live rubber tape rated for high-voltage electrical wire wrapping that I always have laying around.

Works. Cost me about $2/tool. Added to the $1/”cheap-a$$ed” tool price, I came out of the operation with tools as safe (electrically) as $10-$20 tools (screwdrivers in the “pro electrical” range are still expensive) for about $3 apiece. Yeh, yeh, the tools backups. I already have one designed for wiring work (has the nifty lil wire bender for socket/junction box, etc., installations built in–and it’s had its insulated handle beefed up by rubber tape wrap, just ‘cos) and a couple of better wiring pliers, but @$3 apiece, making sure I have one to leave behind at one end of a run can be really handy for my work style.

Besides, if I “lose” one of these, I’ll not weep and moan and gnash my teeth as badly as if I lost one of my better (still not “pro” grade) tools.

Oh, first up? Running a new circuit off an outside circuit that’s been unused for ten years or so. Still not planning to use it for the purpose it was once used for (above ground pool, now gone), so re-routing it inside as a new, dedicated, circuit for the overloaded kitchen. There’s another unused circuit available on that panel (it’s a simple two-circuit sub-panel) that I think I may dedicate to the freezer or the dishwasher, just for the heck of it. Three more unused circuits on another outside panel that may get used outside in the near future, but they’ll just have to wait.

Some strange stuff in this house’s wiring already, so I don’t feel too weird about these lil projects, even though I know it’d be best to just rewire the whole house “correctly”. I’ll settle for safe, for now. Heck, four years ago, I started tracking down a “mystery circuit” that was wired in the main breaker panel but didn’t feed to anything in the house I could find. It was in a terminated box, unused, coming out of the basement ceiling. It’s now serving ONE room downstairs… Son&Heir’s electronics only. Gotta love 12-gauge Romex. (Strangely, that circuit was wired with 12-gauge from the box, whereas the rest of the house 110 has 14 gauge wiring… weird. I kept that circuit at 12-gauge throughout.)

I’d like to pull new wiring, circuit by circuit, throughout the house and rationalize some of the weird layout, but that’s something I’ll just have to do a teensy bit at a time, I think. May take me the rest of my lifetime, as I have plenty of other projects to complete around here. *heh*

Anywho, the “proper tools for the job” don’t always have to be expensive, special-purpose tools. As I did with these, they can be common tools adapted and repurposed to very closely approximate the special-purpose, “pro” tools while maintaining both functionality and essential safety features. Less expensively.

After all, I don’t plan on making a living with ’em, nor do I plan on willing ’em to my heirs.